Leland Inaba
Leland Inaba at his home in Van Nuys. Photo by Jon Endow
“I think the main thing is that they had themselves had nothing to do with the problem between the two countries. There’s nothing you can do to promote or diminish it. It’s out of your hands. It’s almost like God’s will. What can we do?”
Leland Inaba grew up on a farm in Riverside, California, a city nestled in the larger Southern California area known as the Inland Empire. Before the war, it was humming with Japanese American presence and community, as Issei and Nisei farmers borrowed and bought land to cultivate various crops. Leland’s uncle was strategic in that he continued to add on to the family’s original farming property on Jurupa Road, buying acreage as it became available. They diversified their crops and grew a little bit of everything when it came to vegetables, and even branched out into supplying grocery stores with eggs.
In talking to Leland, it appears that his pre-war childhood memories are clearer and more definitive than the memories of wartime and camp. It’s understandable, however, given his family’s experience and particular trauma. His father, a dentist with his own practice in Riverside, was apprehended without warning by the FBI after Pearl Harbor and shuffled to various detention centers, never returning home until after the war. Leland, his mother and his twin brothers, were sent north to Manzanar. When asked what vivid memories he recalls about living there, he simply comments on the unforgiving elements found at the base of the Sierras. “We had big mountains on one side and desert's on the other side, and it was all flat desert. Atmosphere, that's all. It's just flat, dusty, windy.”
Also present for this interview were Leland’s son and daughter-in-law, Mark and Holly Inaba, as well as their two young daughters, Greer and Alexis, who already share a genuine and sweet connection with their grandfather.
Can you talk about how your father immigrated to the United States? Do you know how they met? Do you know what brought them to the US?
I don't know the details but they met while my dad, Hideo, was in dental school before he graduated dental school. And my mother, Chiyo, worked in a flower shop at the time. I was born at the height of the Depression, 1932.
What is your birthday?
July 7, 1932.
Did you have other siblings?
The Inaba brothers
Two brothers. Dennis and Dale. They were twins. I was the eldest.
Are your brothers still around?
One is still around, the other passed away five or six years ago.
Where was your father from in Japan?
Ibaraki. Outside of Tokyo. He immigrated when he was something like 10 years. And after that he says he saw his parents working from dark in the morning to after dark at night. And he says, I was too lazy to work that hard. He said he was determined to go to dental school and do something a lot easier.
Because they were farming?
Farming, yeah. And I remember still remember my grandfather. He was up really early and he worked all day and come in at night and he'd still be doing some cleaning up, like the vegetables he would take to the market to sell. He wanted to keep that horse moving to plow the fields.
So your father's parents were here in the States, but did they bring your father as a young boy at ten years old?
That I don't even know.
So I'm assuming they didn't own their land?
No, no they didn't. They were foreigners and by law they were forbidden to buy land. So they had to buy land in the name of their children.
What were they farming?
Leland and his mother, Chiyo
It was called truck farming. A little bit of everything. That was the safest way to have an income because you don't want to specialize in some vegetable that didn't have a market this coming year. And they're so cheap that you couldn't make much of a living. So just to protect themselves, they [grew] a little bit of everything: green beans, dry onions, asparagus, celery, lettuce.
And my uncle, to balance out things because he had seven kids, a lot of kids to feed, he didn't want to take a chance on specializing at any one vegetable to feed the family. What happens if he planted something that everybody else had? And he wouldn't get much for it. So he bought a lot of land as it became available. So he ended up with quite a bit of land for his farming. And to spread his risk, he decided, well, I think I'll go into raising chickens. First they came up with these cages, they're just barely enough, they couldn't even turn around. But rows and rows and he ended up with quite a few, I forgot how many thousands of chickens, all in cages, all lined up with water trickling down all the way down for them to drink. And food was distributed the same way — a wagon with feed and he'd just sprinkle it all the way down. And that way he figured by the time they started laying eggs that it would be spreading their farming risk instead of vegetables and that kind of stuff, he had chickens. And as it turned out, he says it stabilized his income, made it much better. So he expanded that and he became a Safeway egg producer. So he had a contract with Safeways in order to provide them a supply of eggs.
He became very successful then.
Oh, yeah, he did alright. He did alright. He bought a lot of land as it became available to him ‘cause I don't think he even had a credit card. He was just like my dad, he never had a credit card. He didn't believe in it.
So your father's family was in Riverside.
Yeah. Washington is where they immigrated to from Japan.
And your mother, where was she born?
She was born in Washington state.
Where did she grow up?
Kingston.
And so she was Nisei?
Yes, that's right.
And was her family also farming?
Actually they were big time farmers. He had a milk cows, that's what he did for a living.
So we're going to jump a few years. So by the time that the war broke out, you were about ten, do you remember that day of Pearl Harbor?
Not really, no.
Is there anything around that time that you remember? Do you remember when you started hearing about a war between Japan and the U.S.?
Well, yeah, vaguely, because I didn't understand the concept of what was going on. I just remember my dad saying that the FBI came up to his office when he was working on a patient and they waited until he finished and then took him down to the jail and fingerprinted him and arrested him that day.
So he opened his own practice?
Yeah.
Were your parents involved in other community activities? Were they teachers or Buddhist?
The Inaba family at their home in Riverside.
No, nothing like that. He did support the Japanese community church in Riverside by donations. And I know he made friends with some ministers of other churches and he volunteered to help the poor people get their teeth fixed for free. He never talked about it. You know, I actually came across that part by accident. He never talked about that, the charity work that he was doing.
How did you find out?
I was paid, I forgot what it was, five dollars a week, to go to his office on Sundays to clean it up, fix the magazines and all the other stuff, and mop the linoleum floors. And I went there one time and he had patients and I must have looked kind of puzzled. So that's when he told me what was going on: that he would get patients referred to by some church ministers and he would donate I think one Sunday a month to do dental work for free.
Oh, wow. And were these other Japanese people?
No, anybody. Yeah. Referred by the ministers of the various church. He didn't like to talk about it. He says I'm not doing it to get publicity. That's why he didn't do any of that through the Japanese church because everybody would hear about it.
Your community that you were in Riverside at this time, was it diverse? Was it mostly Japanese American families?
No, no. It was a very minority Japanese community.
Do you remember anything that changed for you at school after Pearl Harbor? Did anybody say anything to you?
I remember that the first friends I made after we came home to Riverside were a group of Mexican kids because I guess they had more sympathy for what was going on.
And you're talking about after the war?
After the war.
They could feel an affinity to you.
Yeah, they put themselves in our shoes saying, “It could be us.” We were born here and yet it didn't make any difference. When the war started we were all considered aliens. Even if you're a U.S. citizen born here, raised here, never left the country.
Did your parents speak to you in Japanese? Did you grow up speaking Japanese?
No because my dad was an Issei and my mom was born here, so English was spoken at home. It was our language except when we had visitors like Grandma or Grandpa visit because they spoke very little English and it was broken English.
So could you communicate with your grandparents?
Not bad. You know, we knew generally what they were saying.
So do you remember your parents saying anything about this tension or the war that had broken out between the two countries?
No, they didn't talk about it. I think it was easier to handle hidden away or pushed to the background than to talk about it, you know because first of all, my dad was taken away right away because he was considered an alien. And so my mom had to take over everything else, including canceling all the appointments. And we were fortunate that the land lady who owned the building where my dad had his office, she was a really rich lady from Pasadena. And her chauffeur — and this is back in the early ‘40s, to have a chauffeur, a legitimate chauffeur, she had to be a legitimate millionaire. because there weren't that many. And she came right away when she heard about it. She had a chauffeur drive her to Riverside and she told my dad, “Don't worry about your office.” And she and my mom went to J.C. Penney, bought a bunch of sheets, covered everything up with sheets, the dental equipment, the sofas and tables and everything. And she says, “Don't worry about the rent. You don't have to pay any money until you come back.” She's really nice. But see, she knew Japanese because her chauffeur was Japanese, her gardener was Japanese. So she was familiar and she was well-educated. So she knew what was going on. She knew it was illegal what the government was doing. And so, you know, she was really nice.
Very. And so was your father's place still intact when you came back?
Oh, yeah. He says it was all intact.
That was very fortunate for your family. Do you know how long the FBI held your father?
He was in jail. He never got home until after the war. He was arrested, fingerprinted, photographed, and then went to Lordsburg, New Mexico as a first place. And then from there he was sent to Texas, Crystal City. And we were sent to Manzanar.
I didn't realize they didn't reunite you before going to camp. So what did you think? Did you assume something awful happened to your father?
No, no. My mother told us what what was going on or tried to explain to us but it was something I couldn't completely wrap my head around.
[Holly]: Did you say he was processed at Santa Anita? I thought you had a story where you guys got to see him through the fence at Santa Anita before he got shipped out or something.
[Leland]: Yeah, that's [where] one of the first emergency center was set up because it was a big area. They put up fencing all the way around. And so we visited him on certain days. Maybe it was Saturday or Sunday, and so we got to see him through through the fence.
And this was before you yourself and your family had to go to camp, is that right?
Yes, right.
And then where were you sent with your mother and your brothers?
Well, we all moved to Los Angeles. We knew we were going to go into one of the quote “relocation centers” which is prison. And we knew that was going to happen so we wanted to stay together. We all moved to Grandma's house in Los Angeles so we could all at least be together. So we were like in a package when we went to Manzanar.
Is this your mother's parents or your father's?
My mother's parents.
So did you go to an assembly center before or did you go straight to Manzanar?
Straight to Manzanar. They put us on a train and we headed out there.
Do you remember the train ride from L.A. to Manzanar?
Yeah. It was just nothing fancy about it, just an old train with bench seats. And I remember we were stuck. Before we got to Manzanar the train had stopped for refueling or water or whatever. And there were a few people [who] came and brought us water, some juices, you know, citizens that lived around. Or I forgot what town it was but it wasn't a big town, it was farming community. And we really appreciated that because everybody was panicking and prejudiced. And here, these people came with whatever whatever they could afford.
And they would just hand it up to people in the train?
Yeah, they just came by and the windows would go up and they would hand [things to] us.
I've never heard of that happening in any other experience of people from these little towns coming up to the trains. And I have to backtrack for a second because I wanted to ask about your home in Riverside. Did you have to get rid of your belongings? What happened with your home?
Oh, I think my folks were fortunate because both being educated, they had educated friends which realized hey, this is not right, this is illegal. And so they they looked after us and volunteered to look after their property. So my mom and dad were fortunate having enough close friends that said, “Don't worry about it, we'll look after your property.” So we took our personal furniture, put it into one bedroom, put a lock on it, and some of the furniture went into the garage part where they had a big room there that we could put furniture and just lock it up. And they looked after it and rented out the house. They collected the rent and put it into my folks' checking account. Yeah, they're really good.
That's amazing.
Well but these were all educated people, so they knew what was going on. There was a difference between our next door neighbor who was uneducated, panicking, emotional. And she testified that my dad at night would go up, climb these great big walnut trees with a flashlight and signal enemy planes coming by. She testified under oath, this is the truth.
And of course, they believed her.
Oh yeah, yeah. She was a living witness [laughs].
Do you remember even saying goodbye to your father from Santa Anita?
Not really, no.
And you felt like you would see him again? You weren't afraid that something would happen?
Well, no because I didn't really know what was going on.
So when you actually got to Manzanar, what were your first impressions of camp and you know, moving into this new place.
They're like military barracks. It's just row on row on row of houses hastily put together on lumber that was about one by six with gaps in between because they're in a hurry to put it together so they didn't bother lining them flush, there were cracks about that far apart. They just wanted to hurry up and build these things because they had to build hundreds of them. Fast.
What are some of the things you remember through your 10-year-old eyes of looking at this place? And the geography of it.
We had big mountains on one side and desert's on the other side, and it was all flat desert. Atmosphere, that's all, it's just flat, dusty, windy at times.
Do you remember the month when you got there?
No, I remember it was hot. I remember it was windy, dusty. And yeah, that's about it.
And were you living with your grandparents too in the same barrack? Or how was the living situation?
Everybody, according to the size of the family, got a certain amount of space per person. So if we had a lot of kids, you got the whole barrack. And if you didn't, you got a third or a fourth.
And so what happened when you sort got settled into life at Manzanar? Do you have memories about going to school there or what are some of the vivid memories?
I don't remember too much about school. I just remember it was windy often because we're in the middle of the desert, and dusty. Some days it would be so dusty that these buildings weren't that far apart, maybe 30, 40 feet apart, we couldn't see the building. It was so dusty.
So it's just a lot of the elements, is what you remember.
Yeah that's about all I remember.
Did you continue in school when you were there?
Well, they did eventually build some schools and they had volunteer Caucasian teachers come in as well as people in camp who are teachers. So, yeah they finally did set up a school system.
You mentioned earlier that you thought it was kind of fun, or there were lots of kids.
It was fun because I didn't have any responsibility. I had a bunch of kids to play with every day. Didn't have to go looking for them, just step outside. Kids would be playing soccer or basketball.
What were some of the things you did with other kids? Were there certain sports you played?
I don't remember too much of that at Manzanar. I remember more at Crystal City ‘cause I was older.
When was your family moved over to Crystal City?
I don't know when but it must have been a couple of years after Manzanar.
So you were still separated from your father for a couple of years.
Oh yeah.
Was your mother working in Manzanar?
I vaguely remember her working with something to do with the post office.
And I meant to ask you before, was your mother working before you left for camp in Riverside?
She was my dad's receptionist at his office because, you know, he couldn't really afford he was just building up his practice. And so she answered the phone, made appointments and stuff like that. So she went to work every day and we had a housekeeper or a maid look after us.
[Holly] If you're looking for vivid details, remember when we went to Manzanar you talked about the rations? They would give you so much butter that you would put it in the garden.
[Leland] Oh yeah. That was in Texas in Crystal City. That's where all of the doctors and the lawyers and the educated were sent with their families. That was their backup card just in case the U.S. lost the war. So we could say, “Oh, they gave us everything we needed and then some.” They gave us butter. During the war, butter was scarce — it all went to the military. Canned goods, couldn't get canned goods over here. And here, you go to anybody's house in camp down there and we find dozens of gallon canned fruit lined up under the bed because the people who ran the stores said to take it because if you don't take it, they're going to cut our rations. And it was the same way with the meat. They said go take this, we got to sell this. And they had minted special money for us just for camp use. Every family got an allowance to buy whatever we wanted using these coins.
We didn't eat that much butter but you're allowed so much every week. And it got so bad that my folks had a little vegetable garden behind our house. It was a duplex and grew green beans, china peas. I forgot what else, but just a small garden. He went out in the middle of the night and he says he got a bunch of butter and dug holes and buried butter all along the vegetables. And a couple of weeks later, they're all dying. But my dad didn't figure. He said, "I forgot they had salt in it."
So he inadvertently killed the whole garden.
Yeah, killed the whole garden because of the salt [laughs].
So what else about living there do you remember? Was your father working in Crystal City?
Yeah, he was a dentist for the people in camp. He was supervised by an army dentist. He was more like a figurehead overseeing the operation at the hospital.
But your dad was doing all the work.
Yeah. But my dad will say hey, if the war had come 20 years later he would have welcomed it because he only worked from nine to five, no emergencies, no Sundays. It was like a picnic.
So you were in Crystal City when the war ended. Do you remember anything about when you know it was ending and you heard that Japan had lost the war?
Not really. I don't remember too much about the end of the war either.
So when you returned back home, how was the reception when you came back home?
Well, I don't remember too much interaction we had with the people living there. We had some good friends that came to visit us once in a while, but that's about it. Just my neighbor there. She was some case. Our property backed up to the Santa Ana River, which was dry most of the time. And she said that the reason we bought that property was because the submarines that could come from the ocean up to the Santa Ana River.
She had way too much time on her hands.
Oh, she had way too much time. Talk about ignorant. She was, really.
Was she by herself?
She was living there with her husband and son and her son went into the Navy.
[Holly] One interesting thing about their return is your neighbors had rented out your house, right? So for the first few days when they returned, his family had to sleep in the chicken coop because the family was still in their house.
[Leland}: Yeah, we had to clean up a chicken coop so we could have some place to stay while they moved out of the house. But it was, you know, a chicken coop was the chicken coop. It's really dirty. Had to go in there and take out the straws and all the shit [laughs].
What else do you remember about returning to school after this time and going back to school?
I was in junior high school and there was no incident I can remember there. Just going to school.
Did your father open his practice again?
Yeah, he went back to his office. It was all ready and went back there.
Wow. So did he have that until he retired?
Yeah.
[Holly] And didn't your mom end up going back to school?
[Leland]: Yeah. And then after that, I see my mom was not the kind of like to clean house, do the laundry, she had filled up to here with that because she had three boys in diapers at one time. And this was way before they had disposable diapers. She had to do laundry every day. It was not an option.
[Holly]: Can you imagine that? And then having your husband taken away. Being left on your own, she had to be so strong. But she eventually went back and became an optometrist.
[Leland]: Yeah. After the war they were all in junior high school she says. And I said like I said, she didn't like housecleaning, dusting, doing laundry and all the stuff. She says I would rather go back to work and hire somebody to do that. So that's what she did. She went back to school and school was hard to get into because the war ended and all guys were getting free education. So it was just it was the competition to get into college was fierce, really fierce. Anyway, she did really good. She graduated cum laude from optometry college. But mainly she got away from housekeeping and we hired a full time housekeeper.
Wow. She was very driven, ambitious.
Well, no, she just didn't like housekeeping [laughs]. She says, “I can make enough money that we can hire somebody to live there day and night, take care of everything I don't like to do.”
I love that that was her motive. That couldn't have been easy to go through school.
It was tough, yeah. Because she still had to keep the house in order, do the shopping. She still had to do the cooking most of the time. My dad loved to cook, so that would make a little bit easier on him. She'd come home on weekends and cook a couple of meals and put them in the freezer.
Years after the war ended, did your parents ever talk to you about how they felt during this time and about your father being taken away?
No. They didn't have any animosity or anger about that. It's just hey, it's life.
[Holly]: I find that sort of remarkable, like dad seems so, “It happened.”
If you had to guess how your parents felt and having this war break out between these two countries, could you now looking back have any sense of what they might have been feeling?
[Leland]: I really don't know. But I think the main thing is that they had themselves had nothing to do with the problem between the two countries. There's nothing you can do to promote or diminish it. It's out of your hands. It's almost like God's will. So I think that's the way they pretty much looked at it. What can we do? We didn't cause it, we can't correct it. They didn't say anything about it.
[Holly]: I think Mark and I are more outraged, you know what I mean? A generation later we're like, wait a minute. But I was always sort of struck by Dad's lack of resentment, you know, which I think is actually kind of sweet and probably powerful so that you don't get stuck in that anger. They just moved on. You have to move on, right?
And I'm curious, do you feel that its impacted your sense of self or the way you see the world?
No, no, I don't think so.
Now, jumping ahead to when the redress happened and the Civil Liberties Act was passed. What do you remember about receiving the apology or what was your reaction to getting the letter and then the redress?
I don't think I even read the letter.
You didn't read the letter?
I don't remember. I don't even remember receiving the money. I guess my parents probably put it in the bank for themselves. That was $20,000 per person that was interned.
Were your parents still alive?
Oh yeah.
So your parents got the apology.
[Mark]: Well your dad was not around in '91. Your dad was not around anymore and I remember your mom was around to get the money. I remember that. I vaguely remember that. But I think she passed away not long after that. But your dad had passed away from, was it a stroke?
[Holly]: No, he was in surgery.
[Leland]: Yeah, he had bypass surgery at Loma Linda Hospital and he never recovered from the anesthetic.
[Mark]: But that was well before '91 because I remember we were little kids then, I want to say maybe I was 10 or 11. And Brad was a few years older than me. Because I remember you said that he would have paid for Brad to go to college.
[Leland]: Oh, I don't remember.
Just kind of thinking about it now, what is your feeling about the fact that they did apologize and tried to correct — do you feel like that was enough?
Well, I don't think that's enough, especially for my dad. You know, he was a dentist, his practice was really building up nicely and to be taken away from all that for five years and say here's $20,000 to make up for your lack of income. There's no way you can replace that with $20,000.
What do you think would have happened with your family's livelihood if you if he had not been taken away? Do you feel like anything would have been drastically different?
Well, it would've been a lot easier for everybody. A lot easier.
Did they ever talk about going back to Japan?
My dad went back to Japan after the war. He says, "I wouldn't mind visiting, but I will never go back there live."
Do you know why he felt that way?
Yeah he told me why. He says he spent so much time over here that when he went to Japan — his family were farmers. And so he loved the country kind of life rather than the Tokyo type of life. And he'd go into these restaurants and they could detect right away that he was not a native Japanese, that he was visiting from the United States because he spoke differently because he's been in this country since he was a kid. And so they bring a menu. And several years after the war, they had menus for the local people and they had menus for visitors. And that really pissed him off. He says, “I'm being cast and treated like a second class citizen.” The native Japanese thought all Japanese that lived in the United States were traitors and that's why they had different menus. 'Cause my dad could read and write and speak and all that, you know. And it really pissed him off.
[Holly]: I just imagine it was such an interruption in your life. So even though his family sort of adopted the outlook of hey, let's just move on but I heard it actually in your voice [to Leland] this afternoon for the first time, I heard a little bit of the of "this was illegal, it was not right." I think that's the strongest I've ever heard you speak about it.
Now to take a kind of different turn, I'm curious about how you met your wife and what that story is, and did she have a camp experience, too?
I don't know if she had a camp experience or not, I don't know that part. But my buddy got married and I was one of the ushers and my wife-to-be was one of the bridesmaids. And during rehearsal, that's when I met her. And I don't know why we started dating, but that's how I ended up, you know, meeting her.
And was this in Riverside?
No, she lived in Gardena.
How old were you when you met?
Late 20s.
Were you working or what were you doing?
I don't know what I was doing there. I had gone to college, I was going to become a dentist and I went to dental school for one semester but I really didn't like the work. It was all close work and I could just feel my stomach just getting tighter, tighter because it was always close work. And I remember toward the end of the semester, you know, you're doing lab work, doing homework. The thing that broke the camel's back was when they passed out a bar of little Ivory soap. “Okay, here's a piece of soap and I want you each to pick a tooth, carve it and present it to our teacher.” And I looked at it, I said, I can't do, this is more detail work. And that's when I actually said, that's enough. When that happened, I called the office and my mom was answering the phone and I told her, I can't do this. And she relayed the message to my dad and he said, “Tell him to come home because if he becomes a dentist, he's going to be a lousy dentist.”
Yeah, you better like your work.
Yeah. He didn't hesitate one bit.
Now, did your dad want you to pursue that or was it your idea to go into dental school?
Photo: Jon Endow
No. It was not only his idea, all of his friends. I'd meet him when I was six, seven, eight years old? And they said, “Oh, you're going to be like your dad.” And that's the way it was all my young life.
It's a lot of pressure to live up to.
Well, yeah. It was assumed, they didn't ask what I wanted. When I was in junior high school I remember I told my mom, I said I really like draftsman, architecture and stuff like that. I loved it. I had a whole kit that had all different kind of pens and stuff like that. My mom says, “No you got to be in business for yourself, you gotta be the boss.” ‘Cause my instructor told me, “You do really good work. If you want to continue this kind of education, I can guarantee you a job when you get out of high school.” But my mom says no, you gotta be your own boss, you can't be working for somebody else.
And you tried that and you didn't like dental school.
No I didn't like it at all.
What did you end up doing as a profession?
I was a stockbroker. Oh that's a completely different thing because after I dropped out of school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was just bouncing around and I met this one guy that had three offices, one in California and two out of state. And I told him, “I'm fascinated with these stocks and things like that.” And so he says, “Well, if you're interested, I'll teach you what I know and if you like it, pursue it. But there's no guarantees on this now.” So, boy, there was several years it was really tough because you were working on commission and when you don't know anybody, it's really hard. You got to prospect all the time and you hear a lot of no, I'm not interested. “Go away.”
And you did that all in California. Were you living here?
Yeah, I did it for almost 20 years.
So you really enjoyed that that work?
For a while, then it got boring because what happened was that the country ran into runaway inflation, where you could buy government bonds that paid way more than corporate bonds and it was a lot safer. So why should you take a risk? Why are you going to go out and buy a hundred shares of General Motors or General Electric or Chrysler or any of those big name companies, which carries a risk, when you could buy good substantial bonds that are guaranteed, save that remote possibility of them going bankrupt.
So to bring it back to your wife, what was your wife's name?
[Mark]: Margaret Osaka. She was younger, I think she was, maybe even nine or ten years younger than you.
[Leland]: Yeah, probably.
And then when did you get married? Do you remember the year you got married?
No I forgot. I just remember my mom telling me she really liked Margaret. So she said, “When are you going to get married?” I still remember the words: It's not nice to string her along — when are you gonna get married? But I was always afraid of girls, you know, I had difficulty talking to them face to face. All my life really. Especially as I got older and in high school especially and it went all the way through college.
You must have just felt comfortable with her.
Yeah, I did. I did.
Now I'm assuming she passed?
She did. December in 1984.
The Inaba family
[Holly]: So Dad really raised the two boys.
I'm curious what you would like your grandchildren or great-grandchildren to remember about your experience? What do you want them to remember about your life?
I really don't know ‘cause I don't remember that much about old history, my old history. So I really have nothing to reference my history. Just, things happen. But I let it slide off, I don't hold grudges or anything like that.
[Holly]: I think there was like one thing I would want them to take away, is their resilience. That would be something I'd want the girls to remember and know. And I think what Dad said was great advice about “don't hold grudges.” Or don't hang on to that.
[Leland]: Why dwell on it, you know? I think I forget little pieces along the way. So I remember feeling less as I get older. That's true. It kind of fades a little bit.