<Begin Segment 30>

AI: Okay, well, so before the break we were talking about your medical school experience at Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia. And while you were there -- you started in fall of 1944 and then the next year, of course, 1945 -- World War II ended and, and the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. And I wondered, you were so busy with your studies --

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: -- and everything, did that make much impression on you, or what --

RI: So, you know, I'm trying to remember whether I had any kind of impression. But I think that, see, we were so deep in our studies and I would say, almost isolated from public goings on, that I don't know whether we even had newspapers around that we, I know I didn't read a newspaper every day, and I certainly didn't own a radio for myself, and so it all had to be hearsay from maybe faculty or other people. But I don't remember being particularly impressed with, "Wow, the bomb," that kind of thing. But immediately after that was just the end of the war and I kind of think that made more of an impression in that end of the war all our parents will be able to leave camp, that kind of feeling. So, I don't remember having much idea about how the bomb had affected the Japanese people. I learned more about that later. But as a student, we were pretty protected within the school campus and I don't think that we talked too much about world affairs or what was going on. So, I can't tell you too much about that.

DG: What about, like your sister, that you were living with?

RI: Oh, after one, one year, she left. Where did she go? She went... she must've gone home. Maybe by then were we back in Seattle? '40... '44, '45 around '46 she must've gone back because the war was over in '45 so I think in '46 my parents moved back to their home.

DG: But one sister got married, you said.

RI: Oh, the sister that got married was in Minidoka. She also from Puyallup went to Minidoka and then from there she left to go to work in Ontario. There was a need for lotta laborers and maybe they went to cut sugar beets or something like that as farming, farmers. Help --

DG: That's where I was born.

RI: Ontario? Yeah. I think they went there. And they met lot of other Japanese people who had come from the camps. And I think when they came back to Seattle they went back to our old house before my parents did. My parents left camp after Bessie and her husband went back to Seattle. And Bessie says that, oh, when she went to this house, well, I guess they had to tell the tenant to move because they were coming. And she said that wow, the bed was infested with fleas and so her husband tossed the flea -- the mattress out of the door and I don't know, burned it or something. But it was horrible. And the house was in very bad shape. So they were there, maybe a little before my parents moved back. And then, one after another, lot of their friends who came out of the camps, they got temporary housing at, at the house, too, before they could find a apartment for themselves. But...

DG: And the house was in your sister's name?

RI: What?

DG: Was the house in your sister's name?

RI: Yeah, I guess it was, because my father couldn't own property. The house was put in her name as soon, maybe soon after she was born. It was an opportunity for him to buy a house in her name. And then what happened was, when she got back to Seattle she was pregnant. She already had a baby that was born in camp. Then after Ontario, when she moved back in 1945, I think, she was pregnant. So she was trying to find an obstetrician and she couldn't find one. She went to one doctor and when it came to her turn this doctor told her that, "Well, I certainly have nothing against you and I would like to take care of you, but I'm thinking about my other patients who are sitting in the waiting room and they, they wouldn't like me to take care of a Japanese woman." So she refused to take care of her. And so this, this doctor said, "But I know another doctor who'd be willing to take care of you." So she went to another woman doctor, and I forgot her name, but she took care of lot of the Japanese pregnant women because the others weren't willing to. So that was one prejudice she faced. But, I didn't know about that.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.