<Begin Segment 17>

SS: Do you ever have any regrets about those years, about what the war interrupted?

HW: What the war interrupted? Oh, I don't know, it's... I think, in a sense, the war probably, maybe interrupted -- tragic interruption. But the acceleration of being accepted, I think, started to improve. As an example, in 1948 when we first moved to Seattle from Minneapolis, we had our daughter with us, she was, and she was only two and a half years old, somethin' like that. And we tried to buy a house in Seattle. All five real estate offices we went into, they just walked into the back room and locked the doors and left us standing out in the office, in the outer office. Except the fifth one, somebody we didn't see up front came out and says, "I'm not like the rest of 'em. Get in my car and let's go out and look at some houses." It was right out here in the Rainier Beach area. But it was that way, yet, you know, in '48. And in some places worse that that. But things, since then things have changed.

SS: Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like had you not, had World War II not have happened?

HW: Yeah, I've thought about it a little bit. I probably would have never worked for Boeings. Yeah, I probably would have lived the life out on either workin' on a farm or on a farm of my own. Some of those guys got rich on the farm of their own, that stayed home. [Laughs]

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.