<Begin Segment 29>

AI: All right, well, today is December 19, 2002 and we're continuing with Mrs. Fukui, Mitsu Fukui here in Seattle. I'm Alice Ito with Densho. John Pai is our videographer today. And Mrs. Fukui, yesterday, before we ended our session yesterday, you were telling us about Detroit. And you, your husband Bill, and your son David were living in Detroit in 1944. You had left Minidoka camp, and I wanted to ask you more about Detroit in those days, things that you remember about that city being so different from Seattle, where you grew up.

MF: Yes. Well, when we had Reverend Andrews bring our car, our Buick 1941 car to the camp and we left about three or four days later. That was on Valentine's Day. It was snowing in camp and my mother cried. And she said, "Why, why leave now?" because the weather was very bad. But on the road it was clear and we stayed in a motel couple of times and we didn't have any discrimination or anything. And in restaurants, they were welcome and Bill had a haircut one time near Detroit. And we got there safely and then we went to the War Relocation office there. And they made, and they told us to stay in a hostel for a little while until we could locate a place for you to stay. And so we stayed in a hostel which was very, very uncomfortable and unpleasant because the lady there, well, she was from Tacoma and she was the wife of a minister. But she was very, very cold to us and we felt very uncomfortable. We tried very hard to try to get out of there as soon as possible. Well, my son was only about two or three years old when we were there and she wouldn't let him sleep with me because he was a male. He had to sleep with daddy. And David was very upset about that. He cried all the time and I said, "Don't be like that, be a big boy and you sleep with your daddy and mommy's right in the next, next room." We couldn't even sleep together as a couple. [Laughs]

AI: That must've been difficult for a -- at that time.

MF: It was very difficult. I felt very sad. I said, why did we leave camp where everything was so, running very smoothly.

AI: But then you were able to find the apartment house.

MF: Yes. What, a -- the war relocation office called this hostel and asked for me and I talked to him. He said, "I want you to come right down because there's a big opening." And we both went down there and this building was quite a large building right on the corner and had two stories. It was a lamp factory and they converted it into nine-unit apartment. I don't know when it was converted but I just saw the one room, one apartment was very comfortable-looking. It had a very small bathroom but otherwise it was a very comfortable apartment as I remembered. And we were to be a manager there. And Bill went to work and I just stayed home with David so I just -- only thing I had to do was to keep the hallways clean and they would have people come and clean the windows and things like that. And my husband would shovel a couple of cinders full of cinders in the furnace in the morning and that would last until we went to bed. And then he would give another couple of shovels full and that would last 'til morning. And we had free rent and then they had a couple of garage there the next door and they gave us a space to park our car. Which really helped us because it was his only wage that we lived on and we had to live on. And at that time it was only a dollar a hour. That was just the normal wage.

AI: It's hard to believe now.

MF: Yeah.

AI: Well --

MF: And you know, I don't know how long we stayed but anyway, we saved about fifteen hundred dollars because the free rent.

AI: And you must've been a very good homemaker, budgeting with the...

MF: Oh yes. Well, we, they didn't, that apartment, I don't know when it was open but anyway, it didn't have a refrigerator so we hunted high and low for a second-hand refrigerator. We couldn't get a new one. They didn't have any in the department store or any hardware store at that time. And so we bought, there was a Japanese fellow that lived there all his life and I don't know how we met him but he was very helpful. He, he helped us shop our beds and our coffee table and a sofa.

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