<Begin Segment 38>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: Your husband, he quit the Mitsui Product after three months, and he moved to the Frye Company, right? What did you think about him moving to an American company?

AT: When he was at the Mitsui Product, it was the Japanese style, so every morning he went to the office, the first thing in the morning -- because he was the last one to enter the company -- he had to go to everybody's desk and say, "Good morning. Good morning!" He hated it. He just hated it. [Laughs] That, he didn't want to work there. [Laughs]

TY: You two talked about it...

AT: No. By himself, alone, he decided that he didn't work there any more. No more. In Japan, he grew up being treated as a master, that's why. In Japan, people called him, "Master, Master," and once he came, "Good morning!" Here, there, he was a master, and he hated the polite greetings. He couldn't stand it any more. He hated working for Japanese. At the hakujin's place, they were equal, right? Greeting is done when he just said, "Hi. How are you?" It doesn't go that way at the Japanese places. In addition to it, if it was a company, it is special. If you had your super, superiors, you have to say very politely, "Good morning." Then you have to tell everybody. Then my husband was in a bad mood. Like when he was eating dinner after he came home. So when he said that he was finally quitting, I said, "Oh, that's fine. Go ahead and quit if you want to quit." I said, "Well, we can still manage what we have somehow." I said so. So, to tell the truth, since he got the position at the Mitsui Product, he shouldn't have said such a thing. But, he said that since he had been here before, he didn't have to force himself to work for the Mitsui Product, and that he could just become a farmer, and he just kept complaining. Then, he had a friend in California, and he said that we should move there because there were many friends there and he could start his own business if he wanted to. But, his brother had a hotel here, it was called the Tacoma Hotel, he had it. So he said that Shizuto was, alone, that he wanted his brother. He and his wife were lonely because they did not have children. It was just him and his wife alone. We had our children at home, then they adored our children. Almost every night, after they had dinner, they came to visit us at 721. They went home after they played with children. So we didn't move because they kept telling us that it was better for brothers to live together here. For me, I was fine with wherever I was used to living. I was already used to our neighbors. Interestingly enough, we lived across from the people who came over on the same ship. I remembered that we talked many things on the ship, and we often said, "It was fun then." It sure was nostalgic. So I didn't want to move anywhere else to live. That was when we lived in 721 on Yesler Way. We lived there for a long time. We were there until eviction, we were evicted, then a house on 309 Boren Avenue was on sale, so we bought it, and Issei, Issei still couldn't buy it. So we used our daughter's name, and we bought it by being her guardians, and that was on 309 Boren Avenue, I think it was. There are buildings that the city bought.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.