Densho Digital Archive - Take Murayama Interview (denshovh-mtake-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: I heard you left Seattle for North Dakota with your husband shortly after.

TM: Well, there was no job. We couldn't choose where to work. We didn't have a choice back then. We found jobs in North Dakota, an opening for a married couple. My husband became a cook. He couldn't cook, but he worked as a cook. I became a maid. So, we went there. We got our own room there. It was well prepared for a married couple to live. And, there were two children, I believe, in the family. A couple and their two children, I think. There, neither of us knew anything, even the letter A or B. But, we just went there. You see, we couldn't live without a job. We weren't afraid of anything. When we got there, they had a room for us. The family must have been well off as they were hiring a couple to do their house chores. They were a young couple, though. They provided us a room there, so we started working there. Now I wonder how on earth we did it. [Laughs] I wouldn't do the same thing now, because I know better now. Even though I still can't speak English, since I already know the situations, I wouldn't have such courage to go there again. Anyway, we went there because we had to work for a long time. I didn't think anything bad about the family. Our friends had been in the same area already. They had already come to the same place under the same circumstance where we got in to live and work. They introduced us to the job. So my husband and I started working there. It was the family of a young couple and two children, I think. They provided a room for us, so that we could make a living of our own. At the end of the day, we went back to the room right after we finished our chores, so that we could be just by ourselves.

TY: Were there any other Japanese immigrants in the surrounding area?

TM: No, not at all. There was not even a tiny piece of Japanese there. Speaking of the wideness of the area, I couldn't believe how wide it was. Just a plain field. If I could see other houses, they were scattered far away from each other.

TY: It must be very different from Nagano where it is surrounded by mountains.

TM: Yes -- how should I say? I didn't feel like there were mountains in North Dakota. It was too wide. Then we went there to work. Well, I could go to such a place only because I was with my husband. There is no way I could go there by myself, even now. [Laughs]

TY: So, the food was American, too?

TM: Yes, the food was all American. Anyway, my husband couldn't cook, but he started working as a cook, right? I think they hired us knowing the situation. So, there were a couple with two children in the family, living in the American way, you see. We got a room of our own and started working there.