Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tosh Yasutake Interview
Narrator: Tosh Yasutake
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: November 14, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ytosh-01-0029

<Begin Segment 29>

AI: Okay, so let's continue. The end, before our break you had just been discharged from the army and were on your way to Cincinnati to visit your folks --

TY: Folks, yeah.

AI: -- in Cincinnati. They had been released from camp and were working there.

TY: Yeah. My folks were, my brother and sister who had, were in Cincinnati going to University of Cincinnati, and that's where my folks, when they relocated, they decided they were gonna relocate in Cincinnati. And they did, and they worked, did domestic work there, which was kind of interesting because my dad has never done anything like that before in his life, and he was hired has a gardener. [Laughs] And what he knew about flowers and plants and, you could put it in a little thimble, I think. But you might have heard that, my sister, brother mentioned it, but he was asked to do some weeding and he was chastised severely because he had pulled up flowers and everything else, picked the garden clean. I mean, he... [Laughs] But anyway, I went to visit them and stayed with them about two weeks. And at that time I decided that I would try to get back into school someplace and, but then I thought, well maybe I'll hold off until I go see New York City. And as luck would have it, my sister was going to NYU at that time and she was living with an old friend of ours, old friend of our folks, an old, Mrs. Nomura, an old lady who had a boarding house. And so she stayed with her while she went to NYU. But then I decided to go visit her, and we, and at that time we decided well, maybe we'll find an apartment, because I decided to stay there until the fall because I had been accepted to the University of Washington that coming fall, of '46, 1946. So we went and found a place in Southern, South Manhattan, a slum area anyway, because the rent was so cheap there. We decided that's the only thing we could afford. And so we rented an apartment at 500 Grand Street, which is very close to Williamsburg Bridge in New York City, in Manhattan. And May and I lived there for, well, I stayed there until I left to go the University of Washington in late August.

AI: Excuse me. How were you able to survive? What were you --

TY: Well, we, at that time most of the GIs were, when they were discharged got something to tide them over until they get a job or get settled down They call it the 52/20 Club and that was fifty-two dollars, I mean, twenty dollars for fifty-two weeks. And May and I subsided on that. Very spartan life, almost a starvation diet, but we survived. [Laughs] But I had a very good time there at the -- and not only that, but I met my wife, Fumi, there at that time.

AI: How did you meet?

TY: Well, we met, they had a Japanese Methodist Church picnic and I was invited to go. One of the girls that were settled like that, I knew, was new in New York, and she invited me on the picnic, and that's where I met Fumi. But Fumi tells me the reason that I paid any attention to her is because I liked the pickles that she had or something. I don't remember that at all, but she said that's what called my attention to her. That I don't remember. But, another thing about New York that was kind of interesting was that as we -- when we, after basic training, when we were going overseas, we departed, disembarked from -- I mean we left Newport, Virginia. And as we left the dock, I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I think I'm gonna have to die without seeing New York City." And so I told, I promised myself the first thing I'll do when I get back to the States is I'm going to New York City. So luckily, I was able to do that. And then I met my wife there, too, so that was that much better, really. And I, for a while I didn't do anything. I just decided to just live on that twenty dollars a week, and buy enough food and then go see Broadway shows. During that time I think I saw about twenty Broadway shows, everything from Oklahoma, Carousel, oh, name it. Whatever they had at that time on Broadway I went to see it and I really enjoyed myself.

And an interesting incident that happened while I was there, other than meeting my wife, was that one day I was going up on the subway to see, take in one of the Broadway shows, and I met a fellow on the subway who was a guy that I got to know real well on the ship coming back home. And we palled around during our trip back, and I got to know him real well and learned how to play cribbage from him. And he was on the subway. And I said, "What are you doing here?" And he said, well, he just took a week off from work and he decided to see Broadway, and said that he didn't like his work and he was going up to the VA to take a civil service exam. I said, "Doing what?" And he said, "Being a clerk." And I thought, clerk? I said oh, well that's interesting. And he said, "Why don't you come with me and take the exam?" So I said, "Well, okay." So I went and took the civil service exam at the VA and I flunked it. [Laughs] The, fifty percent of the exam was typing. And the other fifty percent was written exam. And the written exam was just foolishly easy, I mean, it was so simple, and they had alphabetical, I mean, words scrambled and you're supposed to arrange it alphabetically, and they had numbers scrambled and you're supposed to arrange them. [Laughs] Any idiot can pass a test like that. So of course I got a 50 percent on that. Well, you have to have at least 70 percent to pass. So I took my typing test and I just flunked it flat. I remember taking, I took high school, one quarter of high school typing and I almost flunked that when I was in high school because I was the only male in the class and I wanted to get out of the class and the teacher wouldn't let me get out, so I had to take the class anyway and I think I got a "D" in typing in high school. The only "D" I had in high school. [Laughs] Anyway, I didn't know how to type that well so I flunked it and I got, I think I must have gotten 24, 20 percent, so that's only 60 percent and 70 was passing. No, wait a minute. No, no. It was less than that. About 15 percent, because 70 was passing and I was a disabled vet and I got 10 percent preference.

So I went home and we didn't, in our apartment we didn't have even a telephone then yet and the next morning I get this telegram from the VA saying, "Why don't you come back and take your exam over again?" I thought gee, they must be very desperate. [Laughs] So I went back the next day and took the exam again and I got 50 percent for written part of it and then I got 20 percent for the typing, with the ten percent I got 70 percent and I passed. [Laughs] Then I got the job at the VA. Oh, that was really interesting and I learned how to type real well while I was on the job. And I was hired, I was assigned to the disability section, compensation section, and we just typed out forms for people applying for disability pension. And it was the most boring thing I think I've ever done. And there was a lady next to me who must have been about sixty years old, she's looking forward to retire and she'd been working in that section for thirty years. And I said, "Has the form changed very much since you've started?" And she says, "No." [Laughs] And she was typing. I couldn't understand how she did it, but she did. So, anyway, that's, so I worked in VA for a while so we made a lot more money and we did pretty well after that, and May and I did pretty well after that. We lived on that for a while until I went back to school in September.

AI: Well, during that time, when you were just in New York City, this was very soon after the war had ended. I mean, just only a year or so.

TY: Right, right.

AI: What was the, any reaction you got as --

TY: Well, New York is such a cosmopolitan area. I didn't feel any discrimination at all, really. Even in the area that we lived in, it was a poor neighborhood and everything but I really didn't -- I remember I was courting Fumi at that time. And she lived on the west side on 60th, 66th block on the west side, avenue, west end avenue, right next to the Hudson River, along the Hudson River. And I used to go up on the subway and come home about three o'clock at night. And we had to walk about, oh about a half a mile to get to the apartment from the subway station. And I didn't have any problem even then. So, it must have been because it was in New York. If it had been someplace else, like Bothell where I live now, at that time, it probably would have been, I probably would have been told in so many words about things that I didn't want to hear. So I was lucky that I was in New York then, I think.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.