<Begin Segment 47>

AI: I wanted to ask a little bit about the community attitudes toward nursing home, especially among some of the Issei people and some, and then, of course, their children, the Nisei, because my understanding is that at first people were not too sure about using a nursing home, that before then most of the elders had stayed in their homes or lived with their children.

RI: Uh-huh. Oh, of course, the Issei feeling was that no, they don't wanna be put in a nursing home. It's as though a family is disbanding them. But at that time, there were Japanese patients in different nursing homes. Like I used to, once a month go to all the nursing homes and maybe I'd go to about four or five nursing homes where there's one or two of my patients in there. And the requirement for state payment was that we had to at least check 'em out once a month. So I'd go around, you know, Branch Villa, First Hill, and there was one around Rainier. I think there were about five or six nursing homes. So, the idea was that they should all be concentrated in one place where there would be Japanese culture, Japanese food, Japanese employees, perhaps, that kind of feeling. But there also was the reluctance on the part of the Japanese community that they didn't wanna be put in a nursing home. But I think once the nursing home started and they saw how well-run it was and the atmosphere being towards Japanese culture, I think that the reluctance wasn't very strong, gradually. But it probably took a few years to get to that point. I think that, well, even now, if I say, "No, I don't want to go to a nursing home." But I would say, "No, I don't wanna put that burden on my children. I don't want them to burn out. I am willing to go to the nursing home." I would say that first before I'm encouraged to go to the nursing home. You know, if you, yourself, say, "Okay, I'm willing to go," it's better. But it's a turnaround from the feeling from, well, twenty-five years ago. But seems like it's pretty okay nowadays. That most of the older people -- well, especially the Nisei, I don't think they're objecting that much to going to a nursing home. Maybe the Isseis did, at the beginning.

AI: Well, and as you say, that the quality of the nursing homes could vary so much, and so I think once they saw the quality of the Keiro nursing home it must have reassured some people.

RI: Uh-huh. The only disappointment about the Keiro nursing home is that we couldn't get more Japanese-speaking nurses. But, I could understand that nurses could get a lot better experience in a regular hospital and nursing home is pretty limited as far as their using their qualifications. But we've, we've had to have lots of foreign-speaking nurses, but apparently they have the general qualifications of being caring and kind and that, that seems to be just as important. So, I don't think that as far as the, the residents at Keiro are concerned, they're not objecting to the care they get from the nurses. I mean, they don't say, "Oh we miss the Japanese nurses." I think they're okay.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.