<Begin Segment 31>

AI: Well, I wanted to ask you, were your folks, your mother and father still in Minidoka while you were in Detroit?

MF: Well, they stayed 'til the very last, until it closed and then they went home because they had their own home.

AI: And what about your sister, Toshiko, she had gone out from camp, didn't she?

MF: Yeah, she left early, very early with her friend Ko Suzuki. And they went to Minneapolis and she got a job at (YMCA) as a secretary and she was doing very well and then she met Kay, Kay Ishii and they got married and he was still in the army. He was a sergeant in the army. And then he was stationed in Indiana. So when we were in Detroit we went to see them in Detroit, from Detroit on a rickety rack old, old train. And there was a lotta soldiers on the train and they wanted to carry David and bounce him around. [Laughs]

AI: They must've thought he was real cute.

MF: Yeah. They said, he was only gosh, about three or four? I guess so, something like that. I can't remember.

AI: That's right. That, well, in fall of '44 he would have turned three. Let's see, '39, '40, '41, '42, '43, '44, no, he would have turned five.

MF: Five?

AI: At, November of '44 he would have turned five.

MF: Well, I remember if I might have told you that when we went to Detroit I wanted to put him in the kindergarten or somewhere. And I went to this Catholic church and the priest came out and he said, "May I help you?" And I said, "I like to enroll my son to your kindergarten." He said, "Are you a Catholic?" And I said, "No, I'm sorry, I'm not Catholic." And he slammed the door on me. Imagine a priest slamming a door on a person. And David said, "Mother," he asked me, he says, "Mother, what did we do wrong?" I said, "Mother didn't do anything wrong." It really made an impression on my son. So he never talks good about Catholic people. [Laughs] He still, I'm sure he remembers that.

AI: That must've felt terrible.

MF: Yeah.

AI: To be treated like that.

MF: Slammed the door on us. That's really something. I didn't think those Catholic people are like that. A priest.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.