<Begin Segment 10>

MA: How did you meet your husband?

SO: I think they lived for a short while across the street from my place, and then he went to the same church as I did. And they, his dad had a hotel, and I guess we met at church. I can't remember when we met, but -- [coughs] -- excuse me. That's about how we met, I guess. And I was real bashful, so I didn't, took me quite a long time to get to know him.

MA: Did he, did he ask you out on a date, or how did that...

SO: Yeah, after a while he did ask me on a date, so we'd go to movies and go to restaurants. Have tuna fish sandwich, I remember.

MA: So he was a, a Spokane guy then, right?

SO: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah, uh-huh. And he started the golf club in Spokane, he was very active, and he was, he was helpful to many of the families that came to Spokane from the internment. So he was active in JACL, too, he was one of the leaders, and so he did quite a few things. And he worked, he worked for the... let's see, what was it called? Produce company, so he didn't have to go into the service because he was working with the vegetables and things like that, so he didn't have to go.

MA: Oh, so the government maybe valued the agricultural help?

SO: Yes, that's right, uh-huh, so he didn't have to go.

MA: What about his parents? You said they ran a hotel?

SO: Yes, uh-huh, his dad ran a hotel and his mother died when he was, must have been about ten or twelve years old, I think. So his dad ran it and then after, after we got married, then my husband ran it for a while. But it was, the hotel was right across from the Spokane armory, and so it was kind of dangerous during the war, so right after we got married, I stayed -- he worked in the hotel, and he couldn't go outside the boundary, and so I lived with his sister who was married, I lived with them for just a short while until it was, it was lifted.

MA: Why couldn't he leave?

SO: There was a certain boundary that he couldn't leave, I guess. Anyway, he couldn't get out of there because he was in that limited area where there was the armory. So I don't know, that lasted maybe for about six months or something like that.

MA: And so no one could even go in that area?

SO: No, that's right, so I couldn't go in there. Then I guess once in a while he was able to come visit me, there was something, and then we had to shut our blinds down at a certain time of the evening, our drapes or whatever. And we couldn't go out after such and such a time. It was kind of scary.

MA: So this is all after, during the war when you had all these rules?

SO: Yes, it was during the war, yeah.

MA: How did you...

SO: That was right after I got married. Well, of course, that's when the war started.

MA: Did the government, like, hang up signs saying: "there's a curfew at this time, you must close your blinds"? Or was it word of mouth? How did you receive that information?

SO: Let's see, how did we receive it? I sure don't remember how we received it, but we might have received a letter or notice. I don't remember exactly how, how we knew about it, that we had to do that.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.