<Begin Segment 39>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: You became the mother of one boy and three girls, and in the beginning, you went to night school to learn English, and after that, you said before that you worked at the place where they made necklaces. In 1929, the American economy went through the depression during the Great Depression. Then...

[Interruption]

AT: Well, but one thing I thought about here was, I thought, "Oh, it is so much better than Japan." Because at the city hall, actually it was not a city hall, if there were your superiors, you had to go, "Good morning." In Japan, they all have to go bowing to everybody. He didn't like such places, and he was always looking for other places to move on. Then Terao said this. Terao, he did not work for Japanese people. He always worked for hakujin. Then, he could just finish greeting by saying one good morning. There. He came here, and let's see, he didn't have a job, so he worked for the Mitsui Product for a short while. Yeah. A friend of Terao was assisting the boss at the Mitsui Product. And, he said, "Sam, it doesn't help if you just play around, I am going to talk to my boss. Then the new positions always open up." My husband said, "Then maybe I should go," and he went there. He quit after 3 months. He said that he hated the good morning thing.

TY: Oh, then, your husband's American nickname was Sam? Everybody called him Sam.

AT: Well, Japanese, in Japanese, it is Shizuto.

TY: Mr. Shizuto.

AT: It is Shizuto, and...

TY: Do you spell Shizuto as a "quiet person"? [Ed. note: The interviewer is asking Mrs. Terao how Mr. Terao's first name is spelled in Chinese characters.]

AT: It is spelled as 'to ascend quietly.'

TY: Yes.

AT: To, the part to is to ascend, so Shizuto, to ascend quietly. Then, friend, his friend called him, "Shizu-san. Shizu-san." His friend from his infancy did. He called him, "Shizu-san. Shizu-san." My husband called him, "Ken-san. Ken-san." Well, Ken was Mr. Frye's driver. He drove his boss's truck. The Mr. Frye, the boss was so strange that when he didn't like the way the drivers drove, wherever he was at, he told them to stop, and stopped them. Then he called for a taxi. That's how he went home. But, Ken, Ken Masuda, the boss liked the way he drove. So he adored him, and Ken said, "Hey, Sam. It doesn't help if you just play around, and I am going to talk to my boss, so why don't you start working?" "That's right. It doesn't help as long as I just play around. But, if I work for a bank, I hate the 'good mornings to everybody' custom," and he quit. [Laughs] When he went to work for hakujin, they didn't have that. Yeah. So Ken talked to his boss about my husband, and the boss said, "Oh, the Frye, he can work here," so my husband started working. At the company.

TY: During the Great Depression in 1929, American economy experienced the slump, and your husband was working for the Frye Company then, right?

AT: He worked there for a long time. Back then, having lost their jobs, Japanese ran up quite amount, but they were under protection and received things to eat. There was a place underneath the NP Hotel to serve meals. There was one.

TY: Those who lost the jobs, were they Japanese who worked for American companies? Or, did they work for Japanese companies?

AT: No, even if they worked for Japanese companies, it was the same everywhere. But, the recession was very severe at that time. Well, see, how many people were standing there, quite a few people were standing there. That was because they had to eat after all, they just had to survive. Food was donated to some places, and it came back, and they ate it. Such things happened. But, only Terao, by the grace of God, he was working for the Frye, such things didn't happen to us. So we somehow managed to send our children to school.

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.