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AI: And that was in 1947 when your parents and Joe moved there and you moved to Chicago.

MY: Yes.

AI: And then did you say that that was also the year that you met your future husband?

MY: Yes. He happened to be a friend -- the Chicago Resettlers was in Clark Street, downtown Chicago, and the Catholic Youth, CYO -- Catholic Youth Organization, I think, owned this house that the Chicago Resettlers was in and so the office of the Chicago Resettlers occupied the whole first floor. There was a kitchen in the back and the reception room and the offices, and the second floor was occupied a group of Niseis who had come out of camp and they were renting rooms up there and were working in town. And my husband -- my future husband then -- was a friend of one of the fellows who lived on the second floor. And he was going to Purdue University, had come back from the army, and was getting his Ph.D. in chemistry and so he came from Hawaii, he had no family around. So he used to come to Chicago to visit his friend for a weekend, you know, R&R, he came, he came often, and that was when I met him, at my father's office, I think it was. Actually I met him at an arts exhibit -- my father had invited Taro Yashima, who was a rather, who became a rather well-known Japanese artist. He was living in, he was living in New York so my dad was a good friend of his, so my dad tried to encour-, was trying to encourage him because he was a quote/unquote "starving artist" and they had an exhibit for him in the recreation room on the second floor. They had an exhibit room there, they had an art exhibit for Taro there and Yosh came to the art exhibit, and I remember looking at the paintings and I met him there and Taro was a friend of Yosh -- I don't know how they met, but he was making some comments about, he was talking to Taro about the paintings. And I remember, my dad had said, I was introduced to him as a, this fellow who's getting a Ph.D. in chemistry and then he was talking to Taro about something or other, and I thought, "What do you know about art? You're only a chemistry major." [Laughs] You're only getting a Ph.D., you know, you're a chemist or something like... I made some kind of a smart alec remark like that, and Taro looked at me and said, "Don't kid yourself, this guy is probably more talented than I am. He is the most talented artist I have ever known in my life, and I don't know why he's wasting his time getting a chemistry degree, but..." or something, some comment like that. And so I kind of laughed -- but that was kind of, I was kind of curious about that because Taro had thought that he was a very talented artist who was wasting his time getting a Ph.D. in chemistry. And it turned out to be true. [Laughs] But he did finish getting a Ph.D. and then that was 1947, right when I met, and then we kind of dated off and on through the time when I was writing my, taking my course. I finished my coursework and I was, started work doing advertising copy writing for National Dairy Council in Chicago and he used to, I would come out of my work and he'd be waiting for me out there, so we went out to dinner, and so we met quite often. And then during that time my parents moved in to Chicago and then they met him and I got married, we got married in 1950.

AI: What was his full name? Your husband?

MY: Yoshikazu Yamada. Yeah, he was, he was in World War II, he was not an MIS but he was a translator and he translated the Z plan with the Z, so he became quite well-known in his own right in that area. He was from Hawaii, and I think that we, the place where we meshed, you know, was during the time he was getting a Ph.D. He was very poor, poor as church mice, as they say. He wasn't working and he was struggling along, getting a Ph.D., and we were dating, but we couldn't afford anything, you know, so we went to a lot of museums. [Laughs] They were free at that, you know, these days after, what do they call it? A use tax or something. The museums charge, you know, a lot of museums charge. But in those days a lot of, there were many, many museums in Chicago by the lakes, Great Lakes there. Beautiful, Chicago had some great galleries and great museums and so we spent a lot of time in museums, partly because they were free. And we liked, you know, he was kind of, we were both sort of museum junkies and so we had that in common, and then we got married.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.