Densho Digital Archive - Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga Interview (denshovh-haiko-03-0019)

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So then why did you come back to New York after five years?

AH: Oh, because by that time, my then-husband and I said, "It ain't going so well." [Laughs] "Maybe we should try being apart for a while." And the longer we were apart, the more we were convinced, it's better this way. So I moved to, I went to New York. We were at Fort Lewis, that's where he was stationed, in Washington.

TI: Yes.

AH: Yeah, because his family is from Seattle.

TI: Now, what was your second husband's name?

AH: Davis Abe.

TI: Okay. And when you're married to Davis Abe, did you have children with...

AH: Yes, I had Lisa and David.

TI: Okay, so Geri was in Manzanar, and then Lisa and David...

AH: David, they were both born in Kyoto.

TI: Okay.

AH: They were born in Kyoto, but they were born in a U.S. Army hospital, so they're American citizens, children of Nisei.

TI: That's interesting. So they're Japanese Americans born in Japan. [Laughs] So that's good. But U.S. citizens. So this is about 1954...

AH: When I came back to the United States.

TI: To New York.

AH: Yeah.

TI: And then New York, and then you have three children, and you're now back in New York. And so what do you do in New York?

AH: Let's see. Before I went, oh, after I went to New York the first time, I went to night school and got my high school diploma which was denied me in 1942. So I think I got my first high school diploma in 1947, in '47 or '48. I'm going to George Washington High School in New York. I subsequently got a couple more high school diplomas, because there was a movement here to give all high school, California, southern California high school graduates of 1942 who were denied their diplomas from their respective high school, there was a big ceremony last year or two years ago, they gave one. And then of course I got one in 1989 when Warren Furutani arranged for our class to get, in L.A. high school to get our diploma. So I had three high school diplomas. [Laughs] From New York, L.A. High School, and then California.