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MA: When were your children born?

SO: My son was born in 1943, and my oldest daughter was born in 1945, and my youngest daughter in 1946.

MA: So you had three small...

SO: Yeah, three small children to take care of, so I wasn't very knowledgeable about the community. But my husband did, he was, he was more or less, he was one of the leaders of the Nisei community.

MA: And you said that your husband was involved with the produce for a while?

SO: Yes, uh-huh.

MA: And what did he do after that?

SO: Let me see. That was 1942 or '3, oh, he had a tofu shop downtown between Main and Riverside, and he made tofu and age and he had a few other Japanese things that he sold, but that's what he mainly did. That's right, I forgot all about that.

MA: And that was sort of during the, the war years?

SO: Yes, uh-huh, yeah.

MA: How did he get this idea to open a, a tofu shop?

SO: There was a North Coast, North Coast Trading Company, where they sold Japanese things, Japanese goods, and Japanese food. And I guess from there, I don't know who suggested it, but anyway, he had an idea to start making tofu, and so he did that. He did that for how many years? Oh, it must have been a couple years before he passed away, I think, 'cause he was with the produce company for quite a while. His friends from Portland had come up, they were evacuated, so his friends from Portland had come up, and they had started this produce company, and he worked for them.

MA: Did he do both at the same time, the tofu shop and the produce?

SO: No, no, he did the produce company first, I mean, he was working for the produce company first, and then he started the tofu company.

MA: Who were the customers of the tofu shop? Mostly...

SO: Well, mostly the Japanese community here. 'Cause there were not too many Vietnamese or Koreans living here at that time, so there may have been some Chinese, I don't know. But I know that New Year's, he had to make a lot of age and tofu and that's when he got sick, and that's, he died right after that, in January. I guess he was working awfully hard, and he had a terrible cold. And so that New Year's he was making a whole bunch of tofu, and then he came home and he, he couldn't, he went to bed and he couldn't swallow, and then he suffocated. He couldn't, and they said that they couldn't put a toothpick through his throat. And they said that was not very usual, it was a... they called it acute pharyngitis, and they took an autopsy, and they couldn't get a toothpick through. So it was sudden, because he was very strong. He never did get sick, you know, and that was, but he just worked too hard and just, he was working even when he was tired, sick, worked, sometimes he worked 'til one o'clock in the morning, you know, near New Year's to make all that tofu and age for the customers.

MA: What year did he pass away?

SO: 1948. That was, let's see, January 1948, so I only had him for six years, I guess, December, yeah, six, we got married '41, and then he died in January of '48. And that was a shock to everybody, 'cause he had just been at the tofu-ya making tofu, and they were shocked because he never did, was sick at all.

MA: And at this point you had, you had three small children?

SO: Uh-huh, yeah, they were...

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.