Densho Digital Archive - Ruby Inouye Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

AI: So we'll get started here. It's April 3, 2003. I'm Alice Ito with Densho. Co-interviewer is Dee Goto. Videographer is Dana Hoshide and we're interviewing Dr. Ruby Inouye today in Seattle. Thanks very much, Dr. Ruby, for being with us. And I wanted to ask first, when and where you were born?

RI: I was born right here in Seattle. I, I don't know the exact location but somewhere in the Baptist church area, somewhere like East Spruce Street. But I was the second of six children.

AI: And when were you born?

RI: November 17, 1920. So I am now eighty-two years old.

AI: And what name did they give you at birth? What was your birth name?

RI: Ruby Ayako Inouye. And Ayako was, my father gave everybody a Japanese name but I never used Ayako except as "A," Ruby A. Inouye. The way I signed it I always used the "A" but Ayako never appeared in any of my writings and even in Japanese school my father registered us under our English name. "Inouye, Rubii" was my name in Japanese school.

DG: So you were all given English names?

RI: Yeah, we were all given English names. I don't know why he named me "Ruby" but my sister Bessie was named after somebody he knew in America after he got here.

DG: You were born at home?

RI: I'm sure, yeah. I think it was Mrs. Beppu, she was a midwife. In those days most of the babies were born under midwives and the mothers were taken care of by some woman who came to help in the house and stayed for about a month, taking care of the family and the baby and the mother. But that was the way they did it.

<Begin Segment 2>

AI: Well, let's go a little bit farther in the past and ask you to tell us a little bit about your father and his name and his background from Japan.

RI: My father was Tsuyoshi Inouye and he was the elder of two brothers. And, actually, an older son is supposed to take over the family and take care of the parents but he wanted to come to America and he told his parents that he would work hard and send money back. And so the second son was actually financed by my father's sending money from America and the second son was able to go to Europe to get some education. But my father came when he was about eighteen years old. And at first, in order to learn English, he was like a houseboy where they stayed with a Caucasian family and took care of their furnace or whatever and then went to school, and I think he went to Stevens grade school to learn English. And then in the meantime, because there were lots of other people from the same area in Japan who also came to Seattle, they had a big circle of friends. And most of his friends were in the restaurant business, so eventually he became a restaurant person and started to own a restaurant and gradually get his business experience that way.

AI: Do you know much about what his family did in Japan, and what area that was?

RI: I'm sure they were farmers in a small rural area in Ehime-ken which is Shikoku, southern island, and, well, probably not very well-educated. But my father, compared to other boys his age, was fairly well-educated in that he went to, I don't know whether it was a business school or middle school, or what, but he got a few more years' education than most of his friends did. But when he came to America, well, you know, his intent was to learn English right away. And then after he was in business for a while he needed a wife. So then I think his parents arranged for my mother to come here. And by that time my father probably was about thirty years old. And my mother was selected from a nearby village and she was seventeen years old at the time. But she, I think the prospective, prospective husbands send money for the bride's transportation. And so, he, since he was running a restaurant, he wanted help right away. So he sent extra money so that she could get on a boat from Kobe, first class, or, anyway, better class than the last class where most of the other brides were waiting for. And in that way he was able to book passage, she was able to book passage a little earlier than some of the other women. And she said she turned eighteen in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and I guess that was the legal age when they could come to America and get married. And so when she came to America she didn't know what her prospective husband looked like, but I guess he found her, maybe by pictures, so that, you know, she was called a "picture bride." And then immediately took her to a home and, I don't know how a formal marriage is conducted, but apparently it's done in Japan. I don't think they went through any marriage ceremony, but maybe when they're betrothed or something, they're, they're married that way.

DG: I think their name is registered --

RI: Or something like that.

DG: -- in family history.

RI: But anyway, she, fortunately, I think she was quite, well... smart, I would say, I mean, for a better word. But she was able to learn the American ways pretty easily. But she said that she was bewildered when he, she was first brought to the home and told to make the bed. And she said, "Make the bed? What am I gonna do?" So she folded up all the sheets and blankets and piled 'em up just like in Japan. And then he said, "Pull up the blinds," or, "Pull down the blinds." Well, what are blinds? [Laughs] But those are the things that she talked about and laughed about later that she didn't understand the American way of living because, you know, she was used to the Japanese ways. But, anyway, she -- and then, immediately, he put her to work at the restaurant and he told her to be the cashier so she, she had to learn how to give change and learn the money system and so I guess she learned quickly because -- [laughs] -- he was too busy to teach her very well, but, anyway.

<Begin Segment 3>

AI: And what was your mother's name?

RI: My mother was Yayoi Iseka, was her maiden name. And she was the eldest of five or six children. But her mother died when she was twelve. And so she said that she remembers that her father remarried and had, so she had a stepmother. And there was a younger sister or brother who would cry at night. And so she says she used to get up and carry that baby or child on her back and go outside and walk the street in order to keep the child quiet because the new, new stepmother was irritated with the child crying. But I think she went through some hard times. And maybe with so many children, the family tried to get the girls out of the family so that they, they wouldn't have to support them. But she said that she always -- that's why she said, since she had a difficult time, family life, early, she tried to keep a smile on her face. So she always had a smile on her face, even though inside she didn't feel happy. And then pretty soon, she said that smile became natural and she was always smiling. So a lot of our friends in America, they always say, "Oh, your mom, she's always smiling." I says, yeah, that she, she made herself do that, but, she said it became a nice habit for her.

AI: Well, did she tell you very much about her own family, what they did to make a living in Japan?

RI: My mother's family, they probably were farmers, too, and maybe fishermen. They lived, they lived close to the water. In fact, Shikoku, near where they lived was where she said that Pearl Harbor, it resembled a Pearl Harbor kind of inlet. And so, practice, Pearl Harbor attack was practiced in that area, you know, the Japanese. So, she showed us where it was when we went to visit Japan. But, it's a very nice, picturesque area. And, when I think about their living close to the water and having nice scenery, it reminds me of the San Juan Islands kind of place. I think, well, they grew up with nice scenery, near the water and good fresh air.

DG: The farmers were respected.

RI: Uh-huh.

DG: And so that wasn't really a low...

RI: Oh no. It wasn't low. In fact, probably all their friends were farmers. And they raised potato, I guess, and then they also had mikan trees. Only, instead of mikan they used to be called daidai yama. Daidai was grapefruit. But maybe pretty soon grapefruit was not a good product so they changed to mikans.

DG: 'Cause it's really famous for that now.

RI: Yeah. That Ehime-ken area is, lot of the -- well, when they say "yama" you'd think it's a mountain, but they're hills, lotta hills.

DG: And you said she went to a school for brides-to-be?

AI: I think so. I think she had the standard education, six, sixth grade, and after that I don't think she went to high school. In those days I don't think many women, or even boys, girls or boys went to high school. But she went to a school in, I think Uwajima. Uwajima, it's now Uwajimaya, but Uwajima is a city in Shikoku. And Tomio's father came from there, that's why he called it Uwajimaya. But, anyway, she says she went there for, I don't know, maybe a year or two to learn the basic housewife things, women's things, cooking and sewing and all that. So...

DG: I think you had to be a little bit higher-class to afford to go to that, too.

RI: Probably, because she, it was not in her own village.

DG: Right, right.

RI: It was out of town so she probably had to be boarded somewhere.

AI: So that was a little unusual for that time --

RI: Maybe.

AI: -- for girls to get some extra education like that. Well, and in your, your notes, you had mentioned that your mother was born in 1900.

RI: 1900, yes. She was born 1900, so it was always easy to know how old she was. 1920 she was twenty years old. So she was born 1900, I was born 1920, my brother was born 1930, another brother was born 1940. So we were all decades, kind of thing. But, it was always easy to remember. So if she, if she were alive today she'd be hundred two, hundred, yeah, hundred three, because she was born in January.

<Begin Segment 4>

AI: So, so it was 1918 when she arrived here in the United States?

RI: Uh-huh. She arrived in January 1918, soon after her birthday, so, probably few days after her birthday.

AI: And I think you had in your notes also that your father was older. He had been born in 1887?

RI: 1887, so he was thirteen years older. So he was, well, nowadays that kind of difference isn't so great. But then in those days, it seemed as though he was a old man compared to her, and she was pretty young and naive and had to learn a lot of things.

AI: And he had been in, in the U.S. since 1905, also.

RI: Uh-huh, so he knew how to get around.

AI: Well, now, so soon after your mother arrived, then they started their family and you have an older sibling.

RI: I have a older sister, Bessie. And you know, in those days I think there were a lot of immigrants from Japan. And there were lot of bachelors, too. And they were staying in people's homes. And I think in our homes we always used to have couple of men rooming. And next door, too, there were couple of men rooming. And my mother and father says that when Bessie was born, maybe she was one of the early babies and she was really loved by everybody. And she was always being carried, and there were a lot of other people who like babies, so she really got a lot of coddling and attention. And you know, whenever we went anywhere we all went with our parents. We were never left at home, no babysitting. But we went to funerals, and it seems as though whenever there was a funeral we were all there. And they'd take a big picture, and the kids are sitting in front of the relatives, in front of the coffin. And then later we'd go to a Chinese restaurant and we'd all be feasting with soda pop and all that. But there were a lotta kids. So our families always stayed together, anyway.

AI: Well, so Bessie was your oldest sister, the oldest child in your family, and then you came, and then after you, who were your --

RI: Frances. She's two years younger, and then Lillian, she's five years younger than I am, and then Lloyd -- I mean, Howard and Lloyd. So there were six of us. But...

<Begin Segment 5>

DG: What was the community like, around...?

RI: Well, there were lots of, we seemed to congregate together. You know, the Japanese people tend to stay in the same neighborhood so next door, across the street, half a block away, we were all Japanese families. Everybody had kids. We were, there were always plenty of friends and we'd all congregate at the corner and we'd play games and, and...

DG: What kind of games?

AI: Yeah, we played jintori and Kick the Can and in the winter, we'd be skating or ice skating. I mean, there was always plenty of friends. But there was, my sister was a very sociable person and she was always out and, but I was more a stay-at-home kind of person. So I was a quiet, quite shy. But Bessie was always out with lot of friends. And then my mother would say, oh, that you'd think that she's having a good time with her friends, then they're fighting, and then they're fighting by standing on their porches. My, across the street was another family and that daughter would be, stand on her porch and Bessie will be on our porch and they're yelling across the street. You know, they're fighting. And then my mom says, "Next minute they're together again." [Laughs]

AI: Was that on Spruce Street, where your house was?

RI: On East Spruce, uh-huh.

AI: And what was the cross street near there?

RI: On, near Tenth Avenue, Tenth and Eleventh Avenue. And then nearby was the Baptist church.

DG: So that's right where the housing project is now, right?

RI: The housing project is across Broadway. Well, let's see, across Broadway but near Yesler. So there's no housing project --

DG: Oh, I see.

RI: -- right there.

DG: Just past that. Okay.

RI: Yeah. See, there's Boren Avenue.

DG: Right.

RI: And then the Baptist church is on Broadway and East Spruce. And we were down the street. So we used to go to the church and the church supplied all our social activities, actually. We used to... we had a girl's group. It was called the WWG, World Wide Guild. And then other churches had their groups so there were basketball games together and, and lots of socializing. I think there was. And then...

DG: Was there a daycare then?

RI: No. No daycare. Oh, we did go to daycare. We went to a Maryknoll kindergarten. And I remember that my sister, Frances, and I used to get on a bus and go to Maryknoll. And that must've been around Sixteenth and near Providence, Jefferson, around there. And I remember that the bus will pick us up and we'd be sitting and all the rest of the kids seemed like they were Japanese. But one Japanese girl sitting across from me said -- as Fran and I were sitting together -- "Well, that girl looks nice but that girl doesn't look good, very good," and she was looking at me. And at that time I thought well, if I'm, if I'm, well, I don't know how she said it, but apparently my impression was that I was ugly-looking whereas my sister was nice-looking. So at that time I think it influenced me in thinking that well, looks isn't important. It's not that big a deal. So I'm gonna do the best I can in other ways. And I kind of think that influenced me, because I've never been very interested in how I look or what to wear. I mean, in fact, today I made a effort -- [laughs] -- to try to look a little nice. But, I don't care to spend a lot of time before a mirror and making up or anything. So, I remember that. That was on the Maryknoll bus, going to kindergarten. So apparently, our parents were able to send us here and there to be taken care of because I guess they were busy and my mother was busy at the restaurant, too, so...

<Begin Segment 6>

AI: Well, and you mentioned the Baptist church was so close by, also. I'm wondering, though, were your parents Christian or did they --

RI: I'm sure that they were not Christians at, when they came from Japan. And I think that gradually, with the neighborhood people going to the same church, they probably gradually became Christians. But my mother got baptized. But I think she got baptized after the war, but I'm not sure. My father, I don't remember ever seeing him go to church. Bur we were all sent to go to Sunday School, every Sunday we walked over, just a few blocks and went to Sunday School and learned our Bible verses and all that. But actually, I don't think we really knew what we were doing. But when I was fourteen I got baptized along with my friend who also was fourteen. But to tell you the truth, I don't know whether I really knew what I was getting into. But I thought that being baptized meant that after I'm immersed, and I come out, my whole life is gonna change and I'm gonna be a nice girl. That I would do everything correctly and have no bad thoughts. [Laughs] Well, anyway, that was, that was my idea of being baptized. But I learned that one has to make an effort.

DG: So how did you feel when you came up and found out you were still the same person? [Laughs]

RI: No, I thought that life after baptism, I would be the nicest person. [Laughs] Well, I don't know what "nice" means, but anyway, a good person. That maybe all my sins are washed away. You know, around that time I remember my mother reprimanding me for, "Oh Ruby, nowadays you're not such a good girl, you're talking back." And I remember looking in the mirror at my face and I said, "Gosh, am I that bad?" So maybe about that time I got baptized. I don't know. [Laughs] But those are the kinds of ideas we have when we're young.

<Begin Segment 7>

AI: Do you remember other things that your mother or your father would tell you about, when you were young, about ways they wanted you to be, or to act, or things that were important?

RI: Well, I sort of remember that my father and mother never discussed things in front of us. They probably talked to themselves, but it was not a family discussion. But apparently my father wanted us to become Americanized because when my sister was a teenager -- I think she must've been in high school -- he told her, or sent her out to be a housegirl in a Caucasian family on Broadway. And so she was a schoolgirl who worked, well, I don't know, babysitting or something, and he told her to learn the ways of an American family, like how to set, set a table, where to put the fork and spoon and how, how they did things at home which could have been different from our home. But I remember my sister coming home and saying, "Well, this is the way you're supposed to do. That's how the Iversons did it." But, I think his intent was to have her learn some American ways in somebody else's home.

DG: So they didn't prepare you in any way to go back to Japan?

RI: No, no. They didn't. Except that when my sister was sixteen, my father's father, so my grandfather, became ill and my father, being the elder son, was supposed to go back and take care of him. So instead he sent my sister, and she was sixteen. She was supposed to go there to the, actually, very rural area, and take care of him. And she was there for almost two years. But she, I don't think she really liked it. But then, she, I don't know why she came back. Well, probably the grandfather died and so she came back. So when she came back to Seattle, she and I were in the same year in high school because I kept up and she got slowed down. So then, when she graduated high school, by going to summer school, she finished her high school in three and a half years and I stayed an extra half a year, and we called it like post-graduate, or post- something, we called it. And, because I was supposed to graduate in February, but then by staying another half a year I graduated in June of the following year. But in those days, school entrance was two times a year, in September and February. And since I was born in November, my entrance was in February, so in school I was half year behind the people who went in September. So that way, when my sister went to college, she was one year ahead of me. She went to college first, and then one year later, I went. And that way we weren't in the same class because that would have been sort of, not shameful, but, she wouldn't like it. So, that's how we did that.

AI: Did she say much about her time in Japan? You know, after she came back, did she tell you very much about what it was like for her living there in Japan?

RI: No, I don't remember her telling us a lot about Japan, but that, everything was very rural and nothing like what we had in America because, apparently our home, compared to our Japanese home, had lots of amenities and, like maybe even a washing machine, and being done in Japan, maybe by the river or in the water or something like that, and cooking facilities were different. So we call it inaka, which is very rural. But that, that's the kind of thing she said. Then fortunately, she, I think after the grandfather died, she was able to go to Tokyo where the elder brother, my father's younger brother, the younger brother was in Tokyo. And he was like a college professor or something like that. And his family was in Tokyo, so she spent about a half a year in Tokyo with that family and I think that was very nice because she was, I think she attended school there, too, probably a Japanese school.

DG: Was she treated like an outsider, being American?

RI: I don't know. I never, I'm sure that they were very curious about her, but then, she probably enjoyed it. And there was a little cousin who was much younger, so, I think she was sort of helping to take care of her.

<Begin Segment 8>

AI: Well, going back to your younger years, I wanted to ask about, were, do you remember, was Japanese your first language when you were a little kid?

RI: Was Japanese what?

AI: Was Japanese your first language at home when you were little?

RI: Oh yes. In our homes we all spoke Japanese to our parents until we went to school, until we started school. So apparently, that's all we spoke until we learned English in school. So we started at a neighborhood grade school, Pacific School, and as the older children in our family started to learn English, then we'd come home and we'd speak to each other in English, so then we became bilingual. So we learned our English in school, talked to each other, but to our parents in Japanese. So that way we retained our speaking ability in Japanese. But I think that our English, because we learned the correct English in school, was better than the way some of these younger kids grow up learning English at home, because they learn the wrong grammar and all that, so I think our English was pretty good.

AI: And what about Japanese school? Did your folks send you to --

RI: Oh yes, Japanese school, as I said, my father registered us under our English name. Bessie was Inouye, "Beshi," and I was Inouye, "Rubii." Then when Fran came around, her name was Setsuko. My father registered her under Setsuko. So some of her friends, even now, who were in her class, they say, "Well, I only know you as Setsuko." But apparently we were the only ones with a English name like that in Japanese school. But we went to Japanese school after grade school for one hour, walked from our grade school, high school, even from high school. From Broadway we walked all the way to Weller, Weller and Fourteenth. We walked to there, Rainier now. And then we walked back, for one hour in the wintertime and hour and a half when it got lighter. And sometimes, as we got into high school, if we tried to stay for some event then we'd get late to Japanese school and we'd get scolded for that. But my attendance in school was always very, very good. Like I was very healthy, and so when I was in grade school, I think the eight, we had eight grades in Pacific School, I was absent half a day. I think I had a upset stomach and I was sick in the morning. By noontime I was well enough I went back to school. And that's my entire grade school. I missed half a day. Then in high school I didn't get sick at all, but my father was going to take a trip to Japan and to go to the dock to send the ship off, I had to get a early dismissal. So that was another half a day. Then after that, in college, yeah, I skipped classes and all that, but not very sick. I was always very healthy, which was very fortunate. It helped me stay in school.

DG: So, you went through like eight grades in Japanese language school, is that how it was set up?

RI: I think I went until ten grades.

DG: Ten grades.

RI: Because each year, you know, Japanese school had at the end of the school year we had a, we went to Nippon Kan hall to have a graduation ceremony and they used to give awards to people who have not been absent for so many years, and I think I got a award each year until about eight or nine years. And then --

DG: So how many kids were in your class?

RI: Probably around twenty-five or so.

DG: That's quite a few.

RI: Yeah, but there were lots of people our, our age in those days. Because I think that I was in something called shi no kumi. Shi means four, huh? So, if I, if I were in fourth grade I would say yonen sei shi no kumi. So there was a ichi no kumi, ni no kumi, san, so I was a fourth class and probably end of the year -- since I was November maybe we were graded according to when we were born and I was in the fourth class. So apparently there were lots and lots of students. I think that my year might be the most Niseis around there, born around there, or our age.

DG: Then like --

RI: Of course, we're all getting older.

DG: Like the class itself, what did you do?

RI: Oh, we had a Japanese book and we were taught to read and to write, and talk, I think. We had lot of teachers who were our friends' mother.

DG: Did you memorize a lot?

RI: I think so. Yeah. Well, we memorized iroha ni ho heto, that kind of alphabet kind of thing, and what else would we memorize? Anyway, I wasn't a very good student in Japanese school.

AI: Why was --

DG: Did you --

AI: Oh, excuse me. Why do you say that? Why, why weren't you a very good student there?

RI: Well, I guess I didn't think it was that important, huh? I mean, the English school we got our real teaching I thought, reading, writing, English. But Japanese school was probably, I probably thought it was something our parents were making us go to. So we went. But there were lots of people in my class who were very serious and very good. But I was --

DG: Did you have to declare allegiance to Emperor or anything like that?

RI: I don't remember, but I must have learned how to sing the, their national song. I don't know if we learned it in Japanese school or not, but I think when we had our yearly picnics we probably sang, sang the national anthem, Japanese anthem and probably were taught about the Emperor. I think that in our house there must've been a picture of the Emperor somewhere. But, I don't remember being taught too much about being faithful to Japan, because my parents never talked about intending to go back to Japan. I think they intended to stay here, so they weren't talking like that.

<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, that's interesting to me that they sent you to Japanese school and they did want you to learn that, the language and be able to read and write Japanese, but also it sounds like your father, like you said earlier, wanted you to be very much American. And so, I was wondering, did your father and your mother talk to you very much about being American or being Nihonjin?

RI: No, I don't think so. Since, since there were so many Japanese families all around us, the whole neighborhood was Japanese, and our friends were Japanese, we might have talked to ourselves, but I think we were more anxious to become Americanized. We were more anxious for the other Caucasian kids to think of us as gradually becoming more Americanized. So sometimes, almost as though we wish we were Caucasians. That maybe they were the better class, or they were better than us, and we were trying to be more like them. I think that most of the Niseis, my generation, didn't want to emphasize their Japaneseness. But I don't know. I don't think I was too much like that, but then there were some kids like that.

AI: About what age do you think you might have been when you first started noticing this difference between you and the Caucasian children?

RI: Well, probably when I started school, because even our school was predominantly Japanese. When I look at my graduation picture, about two-thirds are Japanese. And there, and my class only had about twenty kids, but there was, there were two Chinese and maybe two or three Caucasians and the rest of us --

DG: Who were your best friends?

RI: My best friend? Was Sumiko Nishimura, well, right now she's in the nursing home with Alzheimer's. But she was my best friend. However, my best friend, her family was more Japanesey, I guess. When she was eighteen they, their families agreed to have her marry another older guy. And so instead of staying in school with me for the extra half a year she stayed out because actually her high school was ended. And then for commencement, in June, she came, came to the commencement, but she was married. So...

DG: What did you think of that?

RI: Well, I don't know, I thought it was weird -- not weird, but, I sure didn't wanna be like that. I didn't want my parents to do that. But apparently her parents were more Japanesey and wanted their eldest daughter married off. Well, it must have been an agreement between two families.

DG: Probably early on.

RI: Yeah, because that family had four girls, too. And our family had four girls. But fortunately my father said, "Well, girls or not, you're going to college." So that was nice.

AI: He did?

RI: Yes, because, well, fortunately my father believed in education. So he told us early on that we, we are to go to college and yet all around us, our next door neighbor, the eldest boy didn't go to college. A lot of the older, I mean, the boys in the families, some were allowed to go to college, but women, no. Girls were not supposed to go to college. So I figured that my father was pretty liberal. But most of the families needed their kids to go to work and help with their, their finances. But I think that since my father was in business, there was no problem. Because I don't remember ever feeling that we were real poor except during the Depression. You know, I thought we were poor, but actually, when I look back on it, we weren't having any trouble compared to other families because my father had the business and we always had food, because of the restaurant business. And so --

<Begin Segment 10>

DG: What holidays did you celebrate?

AI: Oh, excuse me, before we go on to holidays, I wanted to ask a little bit more about the restaurant business.

RI: Oh.

AI: And the name of the restaurant?

RI: Okay, the name of the restaurant was State Cafe. And when evacuation came around, my father had had that restaurant for thirty-some years, at least thirty years. And it was always around First Avenue and Madison. And he probably started out working for somebody but eventually owned his own business. Well, my mother was put to work when she came. And then when we were old enough, we were always helping. So, there was never a day off in the restaurant in those days because it wasn't unionized. When it became unionized we had to close one day a week, and I don't remember when we closed, maybe it was Tuesday or Thursday. But every holiday we were there helping. And since there were four girls in our family we were always wait-, doing waitress work. And I became pretty good, except that I'm a, somebody called gasa-gasa, you know, a little bit hyperactive, and I'm trying to do too much, more than I'm able to. So, when I'm packing dishes I put so much in my arms that by the time I get to the, to the sink where I'm suppose to deposit it, bang. [Laughs] So my mother would say, "Oh, there goes Ruby again." [Laughs] I broke a lotta dishes there. Because instead of taking maybe two cups and saucers, well, I'd load my arm with this, and you know, gotta do as much as possible on one trip instead of making two or three trips. But we were there for holidays and weekends. But, around then there were a lot of parades. And the parades used to be along First Avenue, Second Avenue. And during the parade time we would be right in front of the restaurant watching them. For instance, like the masons would have a parade or whatever. But we were always downtown. Then, lot of our friends would come to the restaurant and they want to get free ice cream or, or something. They'd go to the library or go downtown then they would stop at the restaurant.

DG: How many tables were at the restaurant?

RI: Gosh, I don't know, maybe about six or seven booths, booths, we called it. And there was a curtain that would draw to close it up, too, but probably the tables sat four or six or -- but there was a long counter, mahogany counter with a big back mirror and most of the work was done on the counter. And then, lot of the, during the war, before evacuation, this restaurant was near the ferry dock, so lot of the workers were going by ferry to Bremerton to work. So early in the morning we'd pack lunches for them and they'd take it to --

DG: So what kind of food?

RI: Well, it was all American food. No Japanese food.

DG: And the cooks, cooks were...

RI: The cook was a Japanese man. We had hamburger and salmon and fish and all kinds of things like that.

DG: Did your father cook?

RI: My father also became a cook, too. He actually was supposed to be waiter, but... then my mother was a waitress. Then when we were going to college -- this is still before and during the war -- my sister and I, we took turns going to the UW. I went to the restaurant in the morning with my father. My father went to the restaurant around four o'clock in the morning. So he'd wake me up and I'd go with him. And we walked because we didn't have a car in those days. We walked down to First and Madison from East Spruce and Tenth Avenue, and then he would open up the restaurant and I would go upstairs to a loft or something and take a nap while he opened up the restaurant, got the stove warmed up and lights put on and everything. And then about the time he opened the restaurant, I don't know whether it was six or seven o'clock, he'd wake me up and then I'd go down and start making the lunch and taking care of the customers as they came. Then, around twelve o'clock my sister will come back from the UW so she would take over and I'd dash out to the University. Because I had a lot of laboratory courses that were in the afternoon and she had lotta lecture courses, because she was taking Economics. So we sort of traded like that and went to school. In those days it was streetcar running around First Avenue and the streetcars went to the university area.

Then I'd come home and I used to study right in the kitchen. Our house was not central heating. There was a coal, coal stove and so everybody congregated in the kitchen and I, I remember studying at the kitchen table with everybody else yelling and all that. But I was able to concentrate. So I think I learned good study habits that way. But that's how we were. And then as my younger sisters got older then they started to take over, too. Then, when my next sister, Fran, was ready to go to college, my father took her aside, my father and mother or both, and told her to not go to college because my mother was pregnant and they needed her to help because my mother can't work in the restaurant. I don't know how pregnant she was, but apparently, when it was obvious. So Fran had to sacrifice herself and work in the restaurant. And she was told that she could go to college later, but about that time we had to be evacuated. So, the younger two did not go to college, two sisters. But my brothers went because they were after the war. But it was our family kind of thing and we all cooperated.

DG: So Bessie graduated?

RI: Bessie graduated in Puyallup. She, she was a senior about to get her degree in June but we were evacuated in May. First of all, though, around that time -- but that's evacuation. You know, she had, she got married and then she got her degree in the grandstands at Puyallup where the UW officials came. I don't think she was the only one, there were several UW people. But she said that she had to bring some, do some work in the camp in Puyallup to finish off. Well, if we were evacuated in May, there probably were a few more weeks of school. But she did get her degree.

DG: Staying with the restaurant, you mentioned that several people, Ehime-ken people owned restaurants and that's why your --

RI: Yes, lots, there were lots of Ehime-ken people along First Avenue, around skid row. There were the Kinomotos, they had a restaurant. They were Ehime-ken, and Nakashimas. There were three brothers who were running a restaurant. I don't know what that restaurant was called. There was another restaurant on First Avenue near the Pike Place Market that was Ehime-ken people. But somehow, probably as friends, they all were in the restaurant business, lot of them were in the restaurant business. But, I think as they got employment in restaurants then they began to own their own.

DG: They mostly catered to the hakujin?

RI: Yeah. Most of the catering was hakujin.

DG: Because like in Pike and Madison area.

RI: But then, since we were, since we were near Western Avenue, lot of the Western Avenue people came up. And there were some Japanese people in that area, in the produce houses. They came to eat their lunch, but mostly Caucasian people, and off-the-street people.

<Begin Segment 11>

AI: Well, also, about the Ehime-ken, did you or your family do very much with the kenjinkai?

RI: Oh, yeah.

AI: Very much activity?

RI: Well, kenjinkai, yeah, Ehime-ken kenjinkai was big deal in those days. They socialized a lot. They had Ehime-ken picnics and Ehime-ken meetings. Well, the Ehime-ken people, they were all, almost like a great big family. But it was pretty big in those days, but gradually, the other day I went to a Ehime-ken New Year's thing in February. And now, instead of being Ehime-ken, it's called Shikoku-ken. There are four kens in that island and so they're all getting together because there are so few people. You know, the Issei people, I'm really not Ehime-ken because I wasn't born there, but for the sake of my mother and father's memory we go, because there are some old friends there, but not many. There are some new Ehime-ken people who, you know, newly immigrated Japanese people who came from Ehime-ken. So, but our old-time friends aren't there. The Nishimuras, Frank Nishimura and his family are there. But his father and mother are long gone, but he invites his whole family to come.

AI: But when you were young, I think there must've been hundreds and hundreds of ken people.

RI: Oh, there were lots of people then. So we, well, Ehime-ken people felt close to --

DG: Was your father one of the... a lot of Isseis, they spent lots of the day going around and talking to their friends and...

RI: No, I don't think so. My father was sort of a quiet person and he, he did not go socializing a lot. I think my mother was more a sociable kind of person. But my father, aside from work, well, he'd come home and he'd drink. He had his sake. And he even made his own sake in our basement, which was illegal, but then... and then after a drink then he'd go to sleep. He was always taking a nap. So he wasn't doing too much of that. But then, for different Ehime-ken functions, well, he'd go out, but then, not too much.

DG: Since we're talking about your father and your mother, you mentioned to me earlier that your mother was sort of the smart one, you were saying.

RI: Well, I wouldn't say that my mother was the smart one. I think they were both smart. But I think that, I think of my mother more because, since she did not have an education I always think, gosh, if she were able to have more education and have a college education, she probably would have been, done, have done very well. But my father, I think among his friends, was considered to be smart. And so, lot of people would come to him for advice and things like that. But, I'm sure that he was smart, too, because when we were in grade school I remember that he made sure we did our homework and I don't think that Bessie and I had trouble with reading, but my other sisters were having little trouble reading and I remember his sitting down with them and teaching them reading and listening to them and tutoring them with their homework. So he was interested enough in that they did okay. And then when we were in school, well, Bessie did very well in school and she was coming home with lotta "A's" and he said, "Well, for every 'A' I'm gonna give you a dollar." Or don't know how much it was, but a dollar was a lot in those days. So she got a lot of dollars. Then when I came along, then I was getting lotta "A's" and after that he quit, because he said it was too much money. [Laughs] But Fran and Lil, they did well, but probably not as well as we did. But Fran says, "Well, I was in the honor roll, too," but since Bessie and I did so well, she didn't get that much attention, but she was good, too. And I think that all of us were, we all did quite well. My brother Howard did well, Lloyd did okay, but by then I was away from home so I wasn't too much involved in the younger brothers.

<Begin Segment 12>

AI: So, we're continuing our interview with Dr. Ruby Inouye. And Dr. Ruby, you had started telling us a little bit about your high school years, that you went to Broadway High School. And in high school, that's a time when a lot of kids are, wanting to fit in with their peers and thinking about who they are and what they're going to be doing as they grow up. I'm just wondering, when you were in high school, what kinds of things were you thinking of? Were you starting to make some plans for the future?

RI: I think my being in high school was just a continuation of grade school. I wasn't a thinking person, and I was just a study-oriented person. So I was just continuing learning and so I didn't have too many thoughts on how I'm gonna fit in with my peers because there were lots of my friends who were going to high school, too, and they were in my classes, and lot of 'em were Japanese. Actually, Broadway High School, it almost seemed like one-third to one-half were Japanese. And I'm sure that with evacuation there must have been a great outgoing of students at that time. But I don't remember that there was that much prejudice either, because there were lots of Japanese people. But the Japanese people weren't, students weren't as participating in outside activities as the hakujin people. Of course, we have to go to Japanese school, so I, I didn't stay for any of the events and I didn't join any clubs and I didn't go to the football games, but it may be because I wasn't that interested in football and sports. But maybe some people did. But still, there weren't that many students who were given jackets with the big "B" on it because of participating. One of my friends did, but that meant that she didn't go to Japanese school and missed a lot of Japanese school. But I think in high school I was just continuing to study and probably doing well, but other than --

DG: Who were the school heroes? Like they had --

RI: Beg your pardon?

DG: Who were the school heroes?

RI: In those days, heroes? What do you mean?

DG: Oh, like class leaders and...

RI: Oh, well, they were mostly hakujin people who were president of this or that or active in publishing the yearbook, or, or, playing football, boy's club, girl's club. They were mostly hakujin people, very few Japanese students.

AI: Did, did you think of yourself mostly as American or Japanese or both?

RI: Oh, I think both. I think I considered myself both. Actually I wasn't, at that time I wasn't ashamed of being Japanese, but, probably trying real hard to become more Americanized. I think we all were. All the Niseis were trying to become more Americanized. But we knew that as soon as we went home we were Japanese. But --

DG: Now what years are we talking about now?

RI: What years? Oh, probably the 19-, early 1930's, mid-1930's, about that time. My high school years were '35 to '39.

AI: And at that time, though, I think, weren't there, there were still businesses and places that Japanese Americans weren't welcome. Do you recall any of that?

RI: At that time? Well, of course my father's restaurant, we've had incidents where people would start coming in, see that we're Japanese and they will go out and say, "Oh, they're Japs," and walk out. But that was more when war broke out, there was more of that. But, I don't remember any bad instances where, you know, they were really mean to us. But, we lived mostly among ourselves anyway, so it was okay.

<Begin Segment 13>

AI: Well, also, during high school you mentioned earlier how your father had said that you were going to be going to college and to plan for that. So were you already thinking about what you would, what direction you would go in in college?

RI: Well, actually, I wasn't in, at that time. I just knew I was going to college, so in high school you have to say what you're going to take and my sister and I, we were in, it was called a college course, in high school. You take subjects that are geared for college. And other people take a business, business course. So I was taking a lot of college, college-oriented courses which were lot of science and, different from taking typing, shorthand, oh, what else? Bookkeeping. I didn't take any bookkeeping. I did take typing. Shorthand I took, which helped a lot in taking notes in school. But...

DG: So, in the science classes, were there mostly boys, then?

RI: Well, I don't know that they were mostly boys. I suppose they were. Maybe I wasn't that aware of whether they were boys or not, but not necessarily. Well, I would say that maybe business courses should be mostly women, huh? Girls, because bookkeeping and shorthand and typing.

AI: And because there were fewer girls going on to college at that time.

RI: There what?

AI: Because, as you were saying, there were fewer girls planning to go to college at that time.

RI: Yeah, uh-huh. But I think when we were freshmen we had to establish what kind of course we were gonna take and I always knew that I was gonna take a college, college preparation course, I guess it was called. But, that meant we had to take science, chemistry, and did I take chemistry? What else did we take? I don't know, anyway, whatever, oh, languages. I think I took Latin.

DG: Do you remember any of your teachers specifically?

RI: Yeah, I remember Ms. Batty. She must've been a literature teacher. And I remember a Ms. Fletcher, who was a shorthand teacher, and oh, Ms. Walker was our roll room teacher. Well, when I was ready to graduate, I almost have a feeling that I must have had one "B," and that "B" must have been in foods, cooking class. And the cooking class was on the same floor as our roll room. Ms. Walker was a clothing teacher, sewing teacher, and this, I think her name was Ms. McAllister, was the foods teacher. And she was gonna give me a "B." And I'm pretty sure that Ms. Walker walked over to the, to the foods classroom and got her to change that to an "A" because then she didn't want my grades spoiled, because I was getting all "A's" until then. Well, nobody told me this but I don't know why I sensed it because I wasn't that good in cooking. We were learning how to make cream sauce and stuff like that and I wasn't good at it and I'm pretty sure I deserved a "B" but just so I won't, it won't spoil my record, I kind of think so. So, when I graduated, it was recorded that I got all "A's" but in my mind I think I deserved a "B" in there. [Laughs]

AI: Well, and when you graduated you were salutatorian? Is that right?

RI: Yeah, I was salutatorian because Momoe Mamiya, well, she's a Takakoshi. Well, she's related to her, Hoshide. You know, she's a Hoshide. Anyway, she was the valedictorian. She had more credits, probably, and the credits were added up. It wasn't a grade point average as much as total, total points, like maybe each "A" was four points. So she probably had more "A's." And she was taking a business course. See, I figured she was very smart and if her family could have afforded it she should have gone to college, but she couldn't because, I think she must have been the eldest child in her family. But, she had to go to work. So there were lot of smart people but if their families couldn't get them, get them to college financially, well, it's too bad. And a lot of boys didn't get to go to college, either.

DG: Were there a certain number of Japanese striving to the best grades, kind of thing, at all?

RI: Striving?

DG: Or, well, let's put it another way. Was it honorable to become valedictorian or salutatorian or...?

RI: I don't think that when I was going to high school I was striving to be the valedictorian or salutatorian. It just turned out that way. I don't think so, but as a rule, most of the Japanese students were studious. I mean, they weren't participating in lot of other extra activities so that maybe they could concentrate on their studies more. So they did well. I think the reputation was that Japanese students did well in school. So it wasn't striving to -- we weren't competing, I don't remember competing with anybody. It just happened like that.

<Begin Segment 14>

AI: Well, and then as you mentioned earlier, then, Bessie had started at University of Washington already and was already attending and then you also started going to UW. And that was, was that in the fall of 1939 that you went, started at university?

RI: Uh-huh, yes, because I graduated '39 and, yeah, in the fall. But she was already -- then she was second year whereas I was first year. But I started out at the UW in Home Ec., because at that time I thought that I was good in handwork. I liked to sew and so it was home economics and textiles and then I started out taking all kinds of art courses, drawing. And I said, "What am I doing?" because I'm, I don't, I don't have, no artistic talent. But it was taking art history. I don't know why but home economics was that the first year. But somehow I got through. But the more I thought about it and well, I didn't like it. I didn't like thinking that I wanted to do this the rest of my life. And then I had to take a drawing class and drawing in charcoal. I said, "I can't draw." So that's about the time when I decided I should do something else.

So I remember that I was working at the restaurant with my father. My father was the cook and I was the waitress. And I told my father what I -- think I wanted to change to pre-med. Well, he doesn't say anything right away. He's very quiet and he's thinking about it. And then I go out front and wait on a few customers. I come back and he's not saying anything. Finally he says, "Well, why do you want to become a doctor?" And I said, "Well, to begin with, I'm very healthy," and I knew that good health is very important. I'm healthy, I did well in school, and I said, "I don't like my Home Ec. class, classes," and I, and then I said I wanted to do something that would help the community. So, his immediate response was, "Well, you're a girl, woman. And you know you're supposed to get married and have a family. That's what usually women do. And besides, you're, you're a woman, you don't know how you'll do." But I must have put up some kind of argument because I said, "Well, I don't have to get married right away, or have a family. I'd like to try." And then, finally, I think he waited a day or two to tell me this, but he told me that, "Okay, if you really want to pursue that course," it's all right with him. So he must've talked it over with my mother, but, because I don't remember any other discussion. So I changed right away and of course I lost credits. I had to take some credits, some courses that I didn't take earlier, but I was into pre-med then. And there were --

DG: So this was in 1940, we're talking?

RI: Yes, 1940 into '41. And there were several Japanese boys in that same course, because I had to take a anatomy course and there were a couple of Japanese boys, one George Sawada, he even was an instructor in, in anatomy. And I think that these boys, even though they were in a pre-medical course, were unable to get into a medical school. But, I wasn't gonna worry about that, I was just starting, so I had to just concentrate on my studies. But there were lots of laboratory classes, chemistry, and zoology and physics. And so --

DG: Was Dr. Ben around then?

RI: What?

DG: Was Dr. Ben around?

RI: He was supposedly one year ahead of me. Yeah, Dr. Ben must've been around because my friend, Kazuko Uno, she told me -- she was in pre-med, too, at the UW -- and she says she and Ben had many classes together. So, her being one year ahead, maybe she, her classes were not same as me. But I remember seeing her on campus but I never had any classes with her. But when Ben died she was telling me about how she knew Ben from university. So, they were both in pre-med together.

DG: Were there a number of Japanese at the U at that time?

RI: Yes. Quite a number. There was a Fuyokai, which was a women's group, I guess social group. And there was a Japanese Student's Club. I don't know whether they were all boys or not. I think there were quite a few Japanese. I wouldn't, never know how many but, enough. Because there was a big Japanese population in Seattle. And all of us were growing up and there were all, lot of people our age.

AI: Did you belong to theFuyokai?

RI: No, I didn't because I wasn't a social, sociable kind of person. But I think that lot of people at the Fuyokai were maybe girls who were from out of town. Because maybe they lived, I don't know whether Fuyokai had a house or not. I think the Japanese Student's Club had a house, but I don't know about the Fuyokai girls. But I didn't, I wasn't a Fuyokai person. And I didn't go to any of the dances and things like that. I wasn't a sociable kind of person. I was just a studious girl, you know, who, but because of work, working, too, very limited time.

AI: Well, you mentioned about how, so there were several of you who were in the pre-medical courses at UW, and, but there really weren't very many Japanese doctors. Japanese American doctors --

RI: At that time?

AI: -- at that time, were there?

RI: Well, there was Dr. Shigaya and Dr. Suzuki. I don't know... oh --

AI: A few.

RI: I don't know whether there was, there was a Dr. Koike, I think he was a ear/nose/throat doctor. But I think he went to Japan. I don't know. When we were children I remember one time we had Dr. Suzuki come to our house. But other than that we also had a hakujin doctor downtown. My mother had appendicitis, had to have surgery and I think it was Dr. Sharples, I think he was downtown in the Cobb Building. So, I have a feeling that the Japanese doctors, because of the big population of Japanese people, they probably had their hands full, and they probably had plenty of business and maybe too busy. That's what I think.

<Begin Segment 15>

AI: While you were in the pre-medical courses, did you ever, were you ever worried about possible discrimination, that you might not be accepted to a medical school?

RI: Well, I must have been worried because all these boys were still hanging around school as a teacher's assistant or something. And they, then they were trying to, switching courses and because they couldn't get into medical school. I probably was worried, but I guess I wasn't gonna face that until I got there. You know, when you're younger it's probably better that you don't know any better. So, I think that was my situation. Because I'm sure that my father told me. I don't think he knew it was difficult to get into medical school, but I think he knew that a woman wouldn't have as good a chance as a man would, but he wasn't trying to discourage me too much. It's, it was big enough of a challenge to get through school, take all the science courses and laboratory courses.

AI: I was wondering if you ever got any different kind of treatment in pre-medical courses because you were a woman. Was that a problem?

RI: I don't think so. I don't remember being treated badly and, no. I think I was treated just like any other student. There were enough Japanese students at the university that other students didn't bother us.

DG: But as a woman?

RI: As a woman? I was --

DG: There, there had to be just a handful of women in your classes?

RI: Well, you mean for taking anatomy --

DG: Right.

RI: -- or zoology or chemistry? No, I don't think so. Because you know, UW, in college you go to a class, you sit there, listen to the lectures, take your notes. You don't necessarily have that much interaction with other students unless it's somebody who sits next to you all the time. I don't remember interacting with other students that much. Anyway, that was me. You know, maybe I'm not a type that would talk easily with other students. And I don't remember having a lot of friends at the UW because, I go to school in the middle of the day and then leave about five or six o'clock, come home. I didn't interact with a lot of students, even with other Japanese students, I didn't socialize very much.

DG: Were you one of those people that carried a lot of books, or not?

RI: Well, I'm sure we had to carry lotta books. You know, a lot of those science books, anatomy books are real heavy. I probably did. I don't remember. I must have looked weird, but, you know, it's good that I didn't know any better.

AI: It sounds like you were really busy in those days. You had a very busy schedule.

RI: Uh-huh.

<Begin Segment 16>

AI: But I'm wondering, too, during those years that you were in college at UW, it was also the time that the war, World War II in Europe was already going on, and also that Japan was also having quite a bit of military action in China. And I'm just wondering, were you aware very much, in those years, of the world --

RI: Well, see, in those days we didn't have TV. I think we had a radio at home. We had a newspaper at the restaurant, but always some customer was reading it, so I don't think I was that aware about the political climate in those days. And I would say that I was brought up in a very naive atmosphere where my parents were not talking about the war, not to the kids. And so, I think I was pretty unaware of what was going on. Of course, maybe, I'm sure that I heard this and that, but as far as making any opinion or reaction to it, I don't remember. I think I was pretty naive.

AI: Well, now, at the same time that you were going to college, of course, Gordon Hirabayashi got in the news. I think first he was in the news because of his pacifism. I think first he was in the newspaper because he was anti-war and a conscientious objector.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: Even before he protested the curfew and the other things later on. I was wondering, did, were you --

RI: Well, I kind of think that, in those days, probably my parents, too, and us, we thought, "Gosh, he's objecting. He shouldn't do things like that." And I think that the Japanese way is to follow with whatever we're told to do and we're not supposed to object. So I kind of think that maybe they didn't like, like that idea. But, that's just what I think now. I don't remember that they said anything, but, I think that the thinking in those days was shikata ga nai, we have to do what they tell us to do. Because my parents were very compliant to whatever they were told to do. You know, the hardest thing was for them to try to clean up the restaurant because they had so many equipment and they had a lease with Charles Clise who was a big property owner. And he wouldn't release them from the lease. So, I think they were paying something, a hundred dollars a month just to rent that place, which seems very little, but this is more than fifty years ago. And even though we had to leave, and clean up everything, he still insisted that my father pay the rent. I think his lease would have been up, maybe, it was a year-to-year lease, and maybe in May he had to pay rent until the end of the year. But that was the difficult part. And then, having to get rid of the dishes and whatever equipment there was, and not being able to sell things. But fortunately we owned a house, and, with a big basement, so some of the big pots and pans and the heavy dishes, you know, restaurant dishes are thick, heavy, they're heavy dishes. Some of those dishes were brought home and they were in our basement. And after we came back from the war, my mother donated them to the church. And at the church I see some of our restaurant dishes -- [laughs] -- but they're thick and heavy, but anyway...

<Begin Segment 17>

AI: Well, let's back up just a little bit in time, because here you were, going to college and then there was this, the talk of U.S. possibly entering World War II, and then in, of course, in December of 1941, December 7th, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, since you were not really following the politics that much, was it a complete surprise? What do you remember about that day?

RI: I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what I was doing. It's a Sunday, huh? And I really can't dig up any emotions on what I thought or what I said or how I felt. But there had to be plenty of talk among our family. And I think the prime emotion is we're sorta ashamed that we are Japanese and that Japan is the aggressor. You know, in a way, I feel that we wanted to hide somewhere because we are Japanese. And because we have a Japanese face, that we are partly to blame for this event. That kind of feeling. And then, how are we gonna go to school the next day and face everybody? They're gonna look at us and think, "Ooh, you're Japanese." You know, "It's your fault." That kind of thing. And I remember my sister telling me that one or two of her Chinese friends said that they're gonna wear a button their lapel saying "I am Chinese" so that they won't be mistaken as a Japanese. But that kind of feeling, I think we were more concerned about ourselves and how we would be treated rather than the whole political issue of Japan being the aggressor. So, that's about all I can remember. But we did, we did go to school with fear that we would blamed for the war. And we tried to keep ourselves -- [laughs] -- almost invisible, I would say, but you know, out of the, out of the limelight, and do only what we had to do. And then when we went to the restaurant it was a different story, because we were Japanese and all our customers were hakujin, and well, of course, they didn't like us because we were Japanese. So there was a lot of prejudice there that -- people start to come in, see that we're Japanese, then walk out. But that, that I remember. But other than that, I don't remember.

AI: So, did your father's restaurant lose a lot of business that way?

RI: Oh yes, I'm sure. Because up 'til then, for a couple years we were real busy because there were lot of workers going to Bremerton and it was before the Japanese, Pearl Harbor. And there were a lot of... yeah, we were busy. He was doing well. And all of a sudden with the Pearl Harbor, then business fell way down, because we were Japanese.

AI: And what about at school? Did you receive any negative treatment when you went back to school?

RI: No, I don't remember any negative treatment, no. No. I think that the students in those days weren't like students now where they protest and, I don't remember any uprising or any protest groups. Or if there were, I probably stayed away. I think I'm the kind who avoids conflict and stays away.

DG: Was church normal?

RI: Church? I think church was normal. But the church was a place where a lot of the Japanese families congregated in order to get support and then they also used the church to store some of their things. I think, I think that our Baptist church gym must have held some things that the evacuees left. Then there was Reverend Andrews, who was very supportive of the Japanese people. And of course he was all for the Japanese and even relocated to near Minidoka. Well, I'm sure that the church had to be supportive, because it was, except for Reverend Andrews, we were all Japanese, so... I remember going to, to our church to get our inoculation. I'm not sure where we got our shots, but we all had to have some typhoid shots.

DG: In your family, who took charge as to what you needed to do?

RI: Oh, my father and mother. Yeah, the first thing we had to do was destroy things. So I think that, I'm sure we didn't have any guns, but I think cameras were... and we had to bring them to this jail site which was on Yesler and about Fourth or Fifth Avenue. Fourth Avenue, there was a jailhouse and we all had to bring things there, probably brought, I don't know, books, maybe. Cameras, pictures.

AI: Do you remember throwing things away or burning up any Japanese things?

RI: Well probably, probably the pictures were burned. Maybe pictures of the Emperor and Empress. And I don't know... maybe old-time pictures, I don't know. I think my mother took care of most of that because, except that maybe as English-speaking children, we might have helped her interpret what the orders were. But actively, actively doing something, I don't remember.

AI: So, in December of '41, were you the oldest child living at home then? Because Bessie was already married, is that right?

RI: Now let's see, December of '41. No, my sister was back from Japan, 'cause she was going to UW.

AI: But she hadn't gotten married yet?

RI: No. She got married when we had to be evacuated. See, there, there was a flurry of marriages around that spring before the May 11th evacuation because a lot of the girls and boys who were going around together, they suddenly got worried that they might get separated and be sent to different camps. So then my sister was going around with her husband and she didn't know where he would go, or even if we went to the same camp, it might be a different area. So, let's see... May 11th, she probably got married in April, in our living room. And I think Reverend Andrews came. He probably married a lot of the couples. And then she moved away, so when we were evacuated she was not with us. And when we went to Puyallup she was in Area A and I think we were in Area D. So we didn't communicate too much.

<Begin Segment 18>

AI: Well, tell us about, what you remember about those last few weeks of getting ready to leave and packing up and...

RI: Oh, I think it was pretty hectic because, because we had a house, we knew that we had a place to put things. So we did pack up a lot of things and put it in our basement. But our friends also wanted to put their things in our basement, so we, I'm sure that we helped them put -- I don't know whether they were valuable things or not. But in the meantime, we also had to rent our house. It was being cleared out and had about four bedrooms upstairs. It was a pretty big house for those days. And to rent it to someone was a problem. And I think that eventually we must have hired an Asian who took care of trying to rent it. And I heard that it was being rented for twenty-five dollars a month to a family. And then, of course they didn't take care of the place so it really got ransacked. And they ransacked the basement, too, where our supplies were stored. But, you know, I was very compliant so I did whatever I was told to do and packed up my own things.

DG: Did you keep going to school at that time?

RI: I think so, until evacuation. Let me see... in May, yeah, I had to withdraw from spring quarter and so I didn't finish out. Whereas my sister, she had to finish out in order to graduate. So she did some work in camp. But I just withdraw. And you lose out whatever hours you've attended. So I lost that quarter. So that meant I went one year and two quarters. Then when I transferred to University of Texas, Texas was on a semester basis so it was very hard to transfer credits. And then Texas also required some basic courses, like I had to take a course in history of Texas, the state of Texas. They were very proud of Texas. But things like that. And some credits they didn't transfer, so it was difficult. But...

AI: Well, we'll want to come back to your experience at Texas later. But in the meantime, so you had to pack things up and get ready and help with the younger children and...

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: What do you remember of the actual day that you were leaving Seattle?

RI: Well, before the actual day, I wanna tell you that my little brother, Lloyd, was two years old, and he was sick. He had a ear infection and we had to call a doctor. I remember this hakujin doctor came to the house and he said, "This little boy needs to be in the hospital." But by then there was a curfew and we couldn't go out after eight p.m., I think. And there was a area restriction, too. So we told him that, "No, we can't, we can't take him to the hospital." He said, "I'll take him." So he wrapped him up in some blanket and took him in his car and brought him, I think it was Providence Hospital, brought him to the hospital. But we couldn't go visit him because we weren't allowed to. Then, I think at that time we were worried that he might have to have a operation, mastoidectomy or something. In those days, you know, there was no antibiotics, so they thought they'd have to operate and cut back into the bone there to release the abscess or whatever. But apparently he got better so he didn't have to have that. And we, we were only allowed to visit him during the day, so we couldn't go until the next day. But I definitely remember that because it was quite a worry for my parents.

DG: Didn't he cry when he was taken?

RI: I'm sure he did. [Laughs] And maybe we cried, too. You know, he was being taken, we couldn't go with him and, but the doctor took the responsibility and said he'd admit him and take care of him, and, "You come see him tomorrow," that kind of thing. But we couldn't help it. We weren't allowed to go out. But, I remember that happened before camp. So he must've, that must have happened, I don't know when curfew started but after the Pearl Harbor, huh? Pretty early? But that was one of the things I remember during the war.

And then I remember there was a hakujin girl in our neighborhood who was in my class. And in order to say goodbye to her was pretty hard. And I remember making a trip downtown to a dime store and buying a little pin, it was a initial pin that you put, lapel pin, and her name was Sophie so I got a "S" and I brought it to her and told her, "This is my parting gift." And of course in those days whatever I spent, maybe it was only fifty cents, a quarter or something, I thought was such a great big deal. [Laughs] But it was sort of parting gift, but I remember that because she was hakujin and she lived in our neighborhood, maybe about two blocks away. But other than that, most of our other friends were all Japanese so they were being evacuated just like us, so very similar. So, I, I remember walking down the street. We lived on East Spruce Street and then at, on Eleventh Avenue was fujin home. And fujin home had -- was sort of a home for widows and homeless children and place like that. I kind of think we gathered down there to board a bus to go to the train station. But...

<Begin Segment 19>

DG: What did you take?

RI: Well, I --

DG: Your own things, what did you take?

RI: Well, I sort of remember sorting out my things. Some of the things that I couldn't take I put in a suitcase, and later on I was wondering where that suitcase went to but I don't remember. I don't, I'm sure I didn't have that many things to take anyway other than clothes. But you know, if I was already, let's see, in 1942, so I was already twenty-one. So I should remember more but you know, I did whatever we were supposed to do and helped my family get ready and I sort of remember walking down the hill to meet the bus where everybody else... but what I know is that my father and mother never made any objections about what they were forced to do. I mean they, I don't remember their complaining, their, mostly their attitude was shikata ga nai. And we gotta do what they tell us to do. But that's very Issei mental attitude. They accepted whatever they were told to do and complied with all the orders, despite, was a lot of grievances, but they didn't complain.

DG: Well, so probably, it's harder to remember because they didn't make an issue of things that they --

RI: No, oh, no.

DG: -- that they were treated unfairly or had to leave something.

RI: See they didn't, they, no, never voiced that kind of feeling. I don't remember their ever discussing things, "Well, why should we," you know, "You people are citizens," I don't remember ever their saying those kind of things. I think that they accepted the fact that we were all Japanese and we have to do what the government tells us to do. I think that was their attitude. That's why there was very little antagonism against the government for doing that, among the Isseis. And then we, as children, we were taught by the Isseis, so we were very similar, I think.

DG: So didn't make a --

RI: Except people like Gordon.

DG: Like your mother probably didn't make a fuss as to what she had to sort out at the house, either, then.

RI: Well, maybe she was fussing, but she never voiced it.

DG: Yeah, right.

RI: You know, not to us. She wasn't saying too much as... she might have voiced it to my father but -- no, we just, she's telling us what to do, how to pack, blankets, stuff. And then, by that time there were some people living with us because they didn't want to be separated. There was one family, also Ehime-ken people who had a dry cleaning shop in the university area. And they were afraid that maybe they'll be sent somewhere else so they came to live with us. So I think near the end we were sleeping on the floor just like Japanese-style because all the beds were taken by other people, probably couple of families. Then we had a cousin, our only relatives in the United States was my mother's cousin and their family, and they had a hotel downtown. Well, they didn't want to be separated so they came to live with us, too. So in the end it was pretty hectic, I think. And trying to get rid of all the possessions and packing up. So, I don't remember discussions. They must have discussed it among themselves.

AI: Do you remember getting, having any discussion with your younger sisters or brother, them asking you because they were younger, asking you what was happening or saying anything?

RI: I don't remember. I don't think they asked me anything. Maybe I didn't know. I wish my memory is better for --

DG: Did you go grocery shopping and things at that time?

RI: You know... well, of course there weren't any big supermarkets. The grocery was the corner grocery to buy bread. We had most of our food from the restaurant, so when the restaurant closed... yeah, there was a, there was a grocery store a few blocks away. I'm sure that we went grocery shopping only during the allowed times, not at night. But maybe that grocery store closed, too. But I don't remember ever not having enough food. Because my father, with his restaurant always had food and I remember that even some of our neighbors, you know, at, during Depression times, didn't have much food and my father would bring them a big halibut or something like that from the restaurant and they'd be so happy because, everybody had a big family and they didn't have money. But we never starved for food.

DG: What was valuable at that time? Like, like pictures, I mean, did you, is there any thought about...

RI: Valuable... well, things, I don't know that we had anything of value. We didn't own a lot of things. The only valuable things are our own furniture and clothes and essential things. I don't think we had anything valuable. Maybe my father had money or gold stashed somewhere. I don't know, he never told us that kind of thing. Not, not at that stage, we didn't have any valuables, because it cost too much to raise us. Everybody had a big family. So, I don't remember having anything valuable.

AI: Well, you had started telling about that day that you all were walking down the hill toward the fujin home. Do you remember anything else about actually leaving Seattle and going to Puyallup?

RI: That I should what?

AI: Do you remember anything else about leaving Seattle and going to Puyallup that day that you were all taken?

RI: Well, I think that maybe since we were not the first ones to go to Puyallup, we must have heard some stories about how things were in Puyallup. So maybe we knew what we were going to. I have a feeling that if we were Area D, that might have been one of the last ones to be filled. And if my sister was in Area A, maybe she had already communicated with us about how things were. But I don't remember. I just followed meekly with my parents and did whatever I was told, and didn't protest or, you know.

<Begin Segment 20>

AI: Do you recall arriving at Puyallup, what you saw there when you got there?

RI: Oh yeah. The fence, fence around, and lotta dust, the, the horse racing arena and the grandstand.

DG: Had you been there before, at all?

RI: Puyallup?

DG: For the fair or anything?

RI: I'm trying to figure out why, why would I ever go to Puyallup? I'm trying to figure out how I would know anything about Puyallup. 'Cause I don't know if they had a Puyallup Fair, but they did -- but see, our family didn't own a car. Well, not many families did. Our next door family had a car, but they were the only ones in our neighborhood with a car. And sometimes they'd do us a favor and give us a ride on a Sunday. But, you know, we had to walk or take a bus or streetcar everywhere we went. I don't remember ever going to Puyallup. So maybe that was the first time I went to Puyallup.

DG: So you saw the fence, and the grandstand and...

RI: What?

DG: So you saw the fence, and...

RI: Yeah.

DG: And then, so where did you go?

RI: Where did we go? Well, we were told to go to Area D, wherever Area D was. But I just remember getting settled in just one great big room. And there were, let's see, five, five kids and two, seven of us. So, I mean we, didn't we have to make our own beds and stuff our own mattress with hay and got a army cot and army blankets. Yeah, I remember that. Then after we were settled I think the first thing we wanted to do was we gotta find something to do. I think I went to the first aid station and started to help there. And my father, I don't know whether he became a cook in Puyallup, but he was in Minidoka. He was the -- he was the area, no, block, in the block, area where he was, I don't know if he cooked the meal, but at least he got it ready to dish out. And what did my mom do? I don't think my mother worked. Because I had a brother who was two years old.

AI: So, in Puyallup, you were all in this one room together.

RI: Oh yeah, one room.

AI: Do you remember what was going through your head when you were getting your family settled in there?

RI: Well, I'm sure that plenty went through my head that, "Wow, we're all in one room. This isn't like a home." And then next door we could, you know, so close you could hear what they were doing or saying. And then you opened the door and right away the whole block, whole aisle people are coming in and out. But that didn't last very long, from May to August. Time went fast because there was lots to be done, huh? To clean up and keep things clean and try to get comfortable and see who's around, from May to August, five, three months.

DG: Yeah, that's a lot of time if you have a whole day without any special plan.

RI: Yeah. Well, Japanese people are very, what, they're resourceful, so pretty soon, people are trying to make a home so they're making this or that and improving their room and trying to make curtains or something for the windows. I remember we did lot of ordering from Montgomery Ward mail order. And I specifically remember ordering lot of yarn and making sweaters, knitting sweaters for -- I remember I made a sweater for a Tsutakawa guy. He was about sixteen and he was at the first aid station, so I made him a sweater. I'm sure it was terrible, but then anyway -- [laughs] -- doing something.

<Begin Segment 21>

AI: So, it's April 3, 2003. We're continuing our interview with Dr. Ruby Inouye. And before the break you were just starting to tell us about being in Puyallup and that while you were there that you started volunteering at the first aid station.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: So I was wondering if you could describe that for us a little bit, what kind of things you saw at that, at the aid station?

RI: Oh, whatever I could remember which isn't very much, but it seemed as though it was sorta like a little booth. And we took care of cuts and bruises. It didn't seem as though we had real big emergencies. I don't remember any. Of course, I was not even a medical student or anything, I was just helping out, maybe running around, doing errands or what. But of course I wasn't trained for anything. And in those days we didn't have CPR or -- so I don't know what, but --

DG: How many of you were there?

RI: I think there was a nurse. I remember one nurse. Was a, was it one of the Tanabe, let's see. I definitely know who it was, but it's, it's one of the, let's see... not Kinoshita. One of the Kinoshita girls is married to her... oh, something like that. I think, I'm not, I'm not really sure but I know she was very nice and very helpful but because of her being a nurse she probably was the manager, and maybe she was showing me some things because, you know, I didn't have any experience.

<Begin Segment 22>

AI: What was a typical daily life like in Puyallup? You'd get up in the morning, and...

RI: Well, of course, the big talk is the big mess hall where we all went, stood in line. I don't know if we brought our own plates, tin plates, maybe. And then, I would call it slop, what we got was slop. And there was a lot of, lotta times it was baked beans and maybe Vienna sausage. Whatever it was it was very high in carbohydrate because I think I gained about five or six pounds. And so I probably used to weigh about 105 or -6 pounds and by the time I got to Texas I was 112 pounds. Yeah. I think that it was the food because -- and then probably not much exercise. There was no scheduled exercise or we didn't have any sports, playing around or running around or anything. Well, this is temporary camp, so there couldn't have been that much organized activities. But I know that, like my sister, she used to play, play a lotta cards. And the way she met her husband was, the bachelors were housed, seems as though it's under the grandstands. And that's where she used to go, and a group of people playing cards, and she, it seems as though one time even I went there and played. And I learned how to play pinochle. But I don't know how to play it now, but I think something I learned there. But other than that, in our childhood by going to Baptist church, Baptists, Baptists were very conservative and we thought that we weren't supposed to play cards. We're not supposed to go dancing. We're not supposed to drink. And then, especially on Sunday, we're not supposed to go movies. So that was what we were taught. But all of a sudden in camp, oh, we were playing cards. Well, I wasn't playing cards too much, but I know my sister was. And everybody was running around a lot because they have lotta friends.

AI: Speaking of friends, did you get any visitors from the outside while you were in Puyallup?

RI: No, I didn't have any friends who came to visit me. You mean school friends? No.

AI: Or neighbors?

RI: I didn't have any. I think that the only one who came to visit was probably my sister from Camp A coming to Camp D. But other than that I don't remember going out of our area to another area. But I didn't have any hakujin friend who came to visit me. I don't know, there used to be a hakujin man called Mr. Bonus. He was a great friend of the Japanese people. He was a bachelor, English gentleman who came from England. And he used to befriend a lot of the Japanese families. And it's very possible that he used to come and visit.

AI: And I was wondering, too, did you recall, in Puyallup, were there any Sunday services, any church kind of service while you were still at the, Puyallup?

RI: I don't remember. There probably had to be, but, I think that the gathering was so quickly done and everybody was so disorganized, that I doubt that there could have been formal services. It's very possible that maybe the ministers came to visit and conduct the services, or maybe they had it in another area. But I don't even remember attending a church. Even in Minidoka I don't remember attending a church.

AI: Well, what was, what were you thinking about -- in Puyallup, did you have an idea of what was going to happen after this temporary camp? Or do you remember finding out where you were going to go next?

RI: No, I don't remember a lot of it, but I'm sure that we were all wondering what was going to happen. But of course there were lotta rumors so that we, we were wondering, since it was a temporary camp, where would the permanent camp be, and how were we gonna get there, and probably lotta unanswered questions. But I don't remember that we were questioning anybody, any authorities. Probably whatever we were told was maybe distributed and... I don't know how that information was passed, maybe on a bulletin board or something like that. But it was all sort of mass, mass...

DG: Did you stay with your same friends or did you have new friends?

RI: In camp? Well, let's see... I don't, I don't know that I had any friends living in the same area, probably mostly family friends, like my mother and father's friends, and people who lived in the same aisle or same block or -- we were all in Area (D) but there was a aisle where there were, I don't know how many families per long barrack. And I don't know that I had any close friends who were in the same, exactly same aisle. But --

DG: But you were busy 'cause you had lotta family there?

RI: Yeah. So I think it was mostly with family, staying with family, doing things with family.

DG: Did you read or study? Or...

RI: Oh, I don't know how I could've. If I didn't bring any books, I couldn't. I don't think there was a library. I don't know if we read the paper. We didn't have a radio. So, it's just a matter of hearsay or talking with other people.

AI: And then I think, after a while, there was a small newsletter in Puyallup.

RI: From, from Puyallup?

AI: Right. I think a very small one.

RI: Oh, I don't really remember. I don't remember, I don't remember reading any.

AI: What was, what was going through your mind as far as being American at that point? Were, did you, were you worried that, like some people worried they were actually going to have their citizenship taken away, or that they weren't really American anymore because of the way that you were being kept there?

RI: Well, to tell you the truth, I don't think I gave that kind of thing much thought. And I wasn't really a very thinking person about why I'm there. You know, I was just like my parents. I'm here because I'm told to be here and you move when you're supposed to, that kind of thing. So I don't remember how I felt. I'm sure if you had asked me fifty years ago I could have told you, but now I don't remember.

AI: Well, is there anything else about Puyallup that you wanted to describe before we move to the next...

RI: No, no. It was a very short time. Probably that's when I started trying to get out and go to school. So maybe I was busy applying for that, trying to find out how to get out.

<Begin Segment 23>

AI: Well, so tell us about the move from Puyallup to Minidoka. That was in August of 1942.

RI: Well, I think that's when we took our first train trip. Well, as I told you, our family never had a car. I had never been on a train. Well, we went to Japan so at least we were on a ship, but being on a train, it was our first train ride. So, maybe it was sort of a novelty. But I don't remember that all the curtains were drawn and we couldn't look outside. But as a family we all stayed together so it seemed like it took a long time. But, it was more the novelty of a plane -- of a train ride that impressed me more than anything.

AI: And then when you got there, tell us what you saw at Minidoka when you arrived.

RI: I don't know how we were transported from the train station to the area. Apparently we were bussed out of there and given assignment in the barracks. And the barracks were very dusty and unfurnished. And I think there were cots on there, but we still had to get our mattresses and army blankets and all lined up, seven beds all lined up, and a potbelly stove at one end. But somehow I give credit to the Isseis in not making a big fuss about how awful conditions are and just accepting what's there and making the best of it. That's all that I could remember. Because gradually somebody got a table or built a table and we had tables and chairs, but until then there wasn't any. And gradually people started to make a garden just outside their door, porch, and going, learning to use public facilities like showers and restrooms and laundry facilities. You know, to have to share all that and learning to live together without fighting about it is quite, quite a adjustment, community living, sharing. But, but before long I think I found employment. I... before long there were, the hospital was being maintained and lot of the nurses were starting to work in the hospitals. And I got a job as a nurse's aide, although I had no experience, but I learned a lot. They taught me how to make a bed, tight, tight bed, and how to use, give somebody a bedpan and that kind of thing, how to give a bed bath while a person's lying down, how to bathe a person, all that. So...

DG: Who taught you these things?

RI: Beg your pardon?

DG: Was it a hakujin that taught you? Nihonjin?

RI: No, I think there were other nurses. Well, there were some Nisei nurses and when they were evacuated I think they started to work in the hospital. And the doctors, too, like Dr. Suzuki, I think he was one of the doctors there. And there was a hakujin doctor who was in charge. So one of the, one of the nurses, seems like her name was Katagiri, but anyway she knew that I was in pre-med so she asked me if I'd like to see a delivery, baby delivery. So she called me one day and I went to see. And then the mother was in labor and when the baby's head started to come out the baby had a cleft palate. And there was a split down here. And it looked really grotesque and, ooh, I think just the shock of seeing that. I thought I almost fainted. I don't know if I fainted or I almost did, but I had to go out of the room. That was the first delivery I ever witnessed. So, it was quite a shock. I don't know whose baby that was but... then, I don't remember witnessing any operations, but there was surgery going on. But this nurse who invited me to see the delivery was very nice to me. But there was another nurse who was very mean to me. And she said, "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be in here." And she chased me out. I don't know what I was doing. Maybe I was observing some surgery, but I always remembered her because I thought, "Oh, she's so mean." But anyway, to this day I always think, you know, you don't have to be mean to people. There, there are ways to be nice and kind. But anyway... because it's too bad that that's the kind of thing I remember. You know, bad things, but maybe it teaches me, now, be careful, don't be mean to people, be nice. So, maybe it taught me a lesson. But that was my camp experience.

<Begin Segment 24>

RI: And I wasn't there long, because in January, end of January I left to go to Texas. And it seemed like it was quite a process, applying to get to a school. But apparently I was very anxious to continue my college education. And so when I got on a train at Shoshone, which was a train station, I got on a train. It was end of January and there was snow on the ground in Idaho. And I was wearing a heavy winter coat, wool skirt, in those days we didn't wear pants. And I got on the train. I think it took at least two days to get there. I'm sure I was there day and night. And there were a couple of other students on the same train and they were going to different colleges, one of 'em was going to Ames, Iowa. So somewhere along the way he got out to transfer to another train while I continued on to mine. And when I got to Austin, where the University of Texas is, I, it was, I'm sure it was like ninety-something degrees. Well, Texas, Texas and Idaho are entirely different. And here I had this heavy wool stuff on. It was like maybe six o'clock in the morning. And I'm sure that there was some arrangement for the family that I was to stay with, for them to pick me up. But nobody was there. And since I had to go to the restroom I looked around and that was my exposure to "colored" and "white." So I said, "Gosh, what am I? Am I, I'm not colored, and I'm not white, so what shall I do?" But since nobody was around I snuck into the "white" area and later I asked somebody, "What am I? Am I 'white' or 'colored'?" They said, "Oh, you're supposed to go into the 'white' area." But Seattle did not have that segregation, so I didn't know. But that was my first exposure to segregation. And this is 1942. Then later on, I stayed with a family in Texas and the father, the husband was the librarian at the University of Texas. The wife was not working, but she was a social butterfly, like. I mean, she had a lotta friends. She always went somewhere, so I was a schoolgirl, which meant that I lived with them but I washed the dishes and babysat and weekends, cleaned the house. But this lady, because she had so many friends and went out a lot, she got me out of my shyness. You know, I think she took me under her wings and introduced me to her friends and I had to talk and make myself sociable. [Laughs] But I think, until then, I was quite timid and quite shy. But going out there opened me up. I give her credit for making me a more sociable person.

AI: Well, I wanted to ask you about the process of getting clearance and permission to leave the camp. And I was wondering if you, did you remember whether, having discussion with your parents about your hopes or your plans to get out, or talking to other students who were trying to get out of camp?

RI: Of course, you know, I don't really remember the process, but apparently I was very involved in it. And I think that my mother and father knew what was going on. But I think there was an organization in, in the camps that was helping students to apply to different schools and helping them process getting into schools. And I definitely think that I was intent on going to a college in Colorado. Now, I don't know whether it was University of Colorado or what, but my mother says that I received a letter from some official at this college saying no way would they ever take a Japanese who's a traitor or something like that. You know, I'm putting the words in myself, but it was some rejection that they wouldn't be caught dead accepting a Japanese student. So that was not acceptable. But I don't know why I applied to the University of Texas but apparently we were told which schools are willing to accept students and so University of Texas, not knowing anything much about the Japanese people, they were willing to take students and see whether they could help them.

So I think I might have been in, maybe not necessarily the first group, but maybe second or third group of students who went there. And so we were sort of on trial to see if we'd be okay, see whether we'd be traitors or how we would do. But I think all the students that they accepted were very anxious to continue their education so I think we did all right. And this Mrs. Moffitt, with whom I stayed, was anxious to help me know some of these students. So one, one time she, she encouraged me to invite everybody to their house to a sukiyaki dinner. And so, going to the grocery store, I think they had a Safeway there, but anyway, to buy the meat, well, at that time I didn't know what kind of meat I was supposed to buy and they certainly didn't have sukiyaki meat. But we had to buy some kind of meat. And at, all the time there was rationing going on for sugar and for gas. And then, of course there's no tofu, there's no takenoko, there's no shiitake, but somehow we got lot of vegetables and put together a sukiyaki dinner and we had a party of some of those students. But I don't remember a lot of them anymore.

AI: Well, so were people in Texas, were they curious about you? Asking a lot of questions about --

RI: Yeah, yeah they were. They were never, there was no prejudice. In fact, they were just curious. They asked me, "What are you? Are you Spanish? What race are you?" You know, they really wanted to know and they were not against Japanese. In fact, one time I was sitting in class and at the end of the class, one lady, one student in the back, she came to me and she said, "Wow, I really admire your black hair." Well, I guess they don't see many black-haired people, mostly brown or blond or whatever. She said, "Ooh, that black hair looks so nice," and she was really jealous of my black hair. [Laughs] But that's how unused to, they were to Asian people. I'm sure that there were some Asian people but University of Texas didn't have, well, many or any students, I don't know, until we went. But they were all very good to us and very helpful and I didn't encounter any prejudice.

DG: So is "we" from the Northwest or did, were there some other --

RI: No, they were from all over. They were from different camps.

DG: Oh.

RI: Well, of course, the camps had to be western United States but a lot of the students were from, originally from California. And the follow-up report that this registrar wrote, most, most of the graduates were professional people. They were chemists, or, or couple of MDs, one was a fishery graduate, I don't know. Anyway, they were all very proficient -- engineers.

<Begin Segment 25>

DG: So you were applying as pre-med.

RI: Yes, uh-huh. I was still undergraduate. I think they were all undergraduate. I think some, I think some did post-graduate work, I mean... but yeah, I was, I had a year-and-a-half. I didn't quite finish two years at the UW, so apparently I was there for two years, but I went through summer so that I think I was there a year-and-a-half including, the summer session became one semester or one quarter or...

DG: So were you excited or scared or...

RI: To go?

DG: Yeah.

RI: Well, I suppose I was excited to get out of camp and go to school again. It was sort of a worrisome thing about where I'm staying, having to live with another family and all that. But they were so nice to me that can't help but be relaxed. And I guess I was a pretty good boarder or worker or, you know, I was very dependable. They had two young girls, something like three and six or so. You know, I was good to them and they took me wherever they went. So, I really had no experience being a schoolgirl but it's just --

DG: You stayed there how long?

RI: Year-and-a-half.

AI: Well, you also had brought in some of your old papers from your application process and here's a letter from... it's on the stationery of the National Student Relocation Council, which was the group you mentioned that was helping --

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: -- Nisei get out of camp and go to college. And it's dated January 5, 1943. And I wonder if you would just --

RI: '43?

AI: Uh-huh. Oh, that must be a typo. Because --

RI: '42.

AI: -- it should have been '42.

RI: '42.

AI: They must have made a mistake on that.

DG: No, '43. It's '43.

AI: Oh, oh no it is, right. January 1943. Because you were in Minidoka --

DG: Fall of --

AI: In the fall of '42.

DG: -- '42.

AI: And you were in Minidoka during Christmas of that year.

RI: Oh, okay. '43.

AI: And then the following January...

RI: Yes, yeah, you're right. Yeah, it is '43.

AI: I wonder if you would read a little bit of that letter. It's kind of interesting.

RI: Oh. "Dear Ruby. Get ready for Texas, for here you come. Should we send you a western horse so you'll be in practice before you arrive? We have just sent your documents to Washington requesting your educational leave to be granted as soon as the report from the FBI is received and you have been reviewed by the War Department. This last requirement is now necessary for all students who have spent any time in Japan" -- I went there as a little, as a three-year-old, I think -- "We hope very much that your permit will arrive around the fifteenth but we have no way of knowing. Perhaps if you find it is urgent enough you might have someone at your project wire Washington asking for immediate clearance through the FBI and the War Department. You will be interested to meet the students who are going to Texas with you and we are particularly pleased that you will be one of them for you have had such bad luck and waiting for the University of Colorado all last fall. Gradually all the students accepted there are getting to other colleges, the University of Nebraska, Washington University, University of Idaho, etc. Good luck now to you, Ruby, and let us know when you do get to Texas." See, this letter tells more about what happened than what I could remember. But I didn't know that FBI cleared me just because I'd been to Japan as a little child, when my mother took three of us to Japan.

AI: And --

RI: But, see, I did apply to University of Colorado. [Laughs]

DG: Right. [Laughs]

RI: And apparently University of Colorado wasn't taking any students.

AI: Apparently not. Apparently they had --

RI: Yeah.

AI: -- or there were many students who had applied there.

RI: Uh-huh. Probably lots of people in Colorado --

DG: Well, I think from Minidoka, that's one of the closest places. That's why.

RI: It could be, huh?

DG: Yeah.

RI: Idaho to Colorado, not too far. And a way --

DG: Although Toru went to, Toru went to Salt Lake.

RI: Yeah, a lot of people went to Salt Lake, relocated to Salt Lake. Colorado was just below that. But, you know, it's just like in the Texas report, lot of the, what do you call them? Regents or Board of Directors, they probably were afraid to take the Japanese students. You know, they really thought maybe we would revolt or do something, so we were only interested in trying to continue, but Texas was very good to us, and they followed up by being very good to us. So should be very grateful.

<Begin Segment 26>

AI: Well, so, is there anything else that kind of stands out in your mind about your time in Texas, things that you recall about living there?

RI: Well, I think since it was the first time I lived out of the camp life, I sort of remember that the things were rationed and gas was rationed. They did, this family that I stayed with had a car but wherever we went they had to remember that they didn't have that much gas so whatever gas they were allowed where they could go. So, I remember that kind of thing, and maybe sugar was rationed. I don't know what else, but this -- the librarian, Mr. Moffitt, was a quiet kind of person, sort of like my dad but the, Mrs. Moffitt, I told you, was very sociable and I, she treated me, not necessarily like a daughter, maybe more like a sister, because she wasn't that much older than I am, maybe ten years older, but I think I did some things for them. Like, since I like to sew, I remember making dresses for the little girls and fixing things for them. I was treated like a member of the family. And I remember one time she was having a dinner party and at that time I was still very short on table manners and I wasn't too sure where a cup or saucer or what belonged and where the silverware belonged. But anyway, her friends were trying to engage me in conversation, asking me what my goals are and what I... when they find out I'm a pre-med, what I'm gonna do and things like that. And one lady said to me, "Oh, you have such an intelligent face." [Laughs] I don't know why I remember that conversation. But anyway, they were all very good to me so my Texas experience was always very good.

Few years later, maybe like fifteen to twenty years later, when I was in practice and I had, I must have had two or three kids, they came to visit, the husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Moffitt came to visit me in Seattle. And I remember taking them to Bush Garden to eat. And we sat in one of those booths where you put your feet down in a hole, and at that time, my two kids, they were screaming and yelling and moving around and I thought, "Oh my gosh." [Laughs] It was more embarrassing then than to try to make a impression on them. And I don't know whether they really appreciated Japanese food or not, but I don't even remember what we ate. But that was my last experience with them. I never did go back to Austin, Texas since then.

<Begin Segment 27>

AI: Well, during the time that you were at University of Texas, at some point you must have started applying to medical schools.

RI: Yeah, I think so. I must have. And I don't know how I knew... I probably applied to a lot of medical schools and maybe somebody at school helped me and maybe gave me a list where to apply. I know that I got lotta rejections. But maybe this medical college in Philadelphia was willing to consider my application because they wanted to get a good variety of students from all over the United States and I was still considered a Washington resident, so I'm from Washington State, and also a Japanese. Maybe they wanted diversity in their student, student group. There were a lot of students; most of the students were from the East Coast, though, in the New York area. But there were students from Puerto Rico, I think there was a student from Hawaii, but could it have been Japanese? No. Well, anyway, she certainly was not in my class. But my experience in applying was that this medical college was the only college that would consider my application. And I think it's because they wanted a variety of students, not because I was that great. I probably wasn't. But when I went to medical school I found that the student composition was little bit different from what it is now in that most of the women were older and they had already careers. They were, they had worked in nursing or in biology or teaching or something like that for a few years and then they redirected their career towards medicine so that many of the students were a little bit older. And I also found that they were all very intellectual. So I thought when I went to medical school that I was a good student but when I got there and started to compete with them I was not a good student. School was very difficult. It was hard. And do you want me to tell you about Kazuko?

AI: Well, before we go on --

RI: No, that's... I'm jumping the, yeah.

AI: I do want to hear about Kazuko, but before that, just to finish up a little bit, finish the --

RI: Texas?

AI: -- about your time in Texas, I did want to ask if there was, if you've faced any problem there as a woman, again, as a woman in pre-med. Was that any difficulty at Texas?

RI: I don't think so. I don't think that I was ever... why, as a woman -- just because I'm in pre-med doesn't mean that I am sorted out. You know, you're taking a course in chemistry or physics or... I do remember that I was in a physics class and, you know, great big class, all men, except two women. And we had a big test and there were only two "A's" and it was the two women. So I remember the teacher or professor commenting, "Well, the top two are women." [Laughs] So, of course my, my, what, my idea of women excelling in science was okay. [Laughs]

AI: Well, the reason I'm asking, the reason I'm curious is because I think, at that time, there, I'm guessing there were some men who really believed that women did not belong in medicine as doctors. And I'm, I was wondering if that, if you ever came across that?

RI: Well, I don't think, I don't think that at the University of Texas there was any kind of feeling like that because, you know, I'm just trying to get into medical school and who would be objecting to my applying? Maybe lotta people didn't know I'm applying. And even if I'm in pre-med, I don't know whether I'm segregated as a pre-med student or maybe somebody in science or seeking a B.A. degree in, I think my degree said B.A. in chemistry. So, they don't necessarily know that I am applying for medical school. So, I don't think that I was competing with anybody. I'm trying to get into a medical school and my goal is to try to get a school to accept me, and that was the difficulty because most of the schools wouldn't even consider a Japanese, and then a woman. It was very difficult. In those days the women student composition was more like five percent. Nowadays it's about fifty percent, maybe a little over fifty. So the women now are very fortunate. They don't have to face that. But, fortunately for --

DG: But were you, were you aware that it was going to be a small percentage that you had to compete with?

RI: Yeah, I think so.

DG: And so...

RI: Well, I sure found out fast, when they started turning me down. Yeah.

DG: Did it motivate you?

RI: Well, how could I be motivated to... even if I apply, even if I had top grades, it wouldn't have made much difference, 'cause I'm Japanese. And at that time Japan and America were at war. So...

DG: But you weren't discouraged because of all of that?

RI: Well, I could've been, but then I'm trying, huh? I, well, that's my next step --

DG: Did you talk to anybody, or did you...?

RI: Well, I don't remember that I could talk to anybody other than the family I stayed with, and the school officials. Maybe somebody was helping me.

DG: Well, I think they knew. So maybe they encouraged you.

RI: Yeah, but I don't remember having anybody discourage me.

DG: Well, so maybe they worked hard to encourage you?

RI: Well maybe, because I had never heard about Woman's Medical College before. So somebody must have told me. Maybe, maybe there was a counselor, my counselor or someone who knew about how to apply. So, I'm sure that lotta people helped me --

DG: Oh, because even in --

RI: -- and I wish I could remember who they were.

DG: -- even in my time, fifteen years later, they, it was known and...

RI: It was known.

DG: Yeah.

RI: Well, it had to be known. Maybe... but sometimes I think it probably was better I didn't know any better. I don't remember getting discouraged but I must have been. But, for me to get in, that was something. Wasn't it?

DG: Right.

RI: Yeah, it was something. If I graduated in June, and got in to start by end of August, by September.

AI: Right.

RI: That was pretty good.

<Begin Segment 28>

AI: That was June 1944 that you got your Bachelor's --

RI: Yeah, uh-huh.

AI: -- from University of Texas, and I think you received honors, didn't you? High honors at University of Texas? So then what happened that summer in between your graduation and --

RI: Okay, that summer, as soon as I graduated, I took a train and went to Philadelphia. And in that letter it tells somebody from Philadelphia wrote, saying that they would try to find a place for me to stay. But I immediately went to a Friends, Friends, Quaker Friends hostel. There was a hostel being run from, by a Japanese couple and there were lots of Japanese students and Japanese people staying there for temporary housing. And from there we applied for work. So then I think they had a bulletin board and I said, "I'm looking for work." Here it's only June and school doesn't start 'til maybe beginning of September. And I got a job with a Quaker family to be a maid. And so whatever, it was okay because I needed board and room. So I went there to a Quaker house and she immediately gave me a uniform to wear, a maid's uniform, and she told me what to do. And I did whatever she told me. And then about a month later they went to a summer place up in the Pocono Mountains, I think it was. I, is that in Pennsylvania? And they had a cabin there in summer, summer place. So I stayed with them, but I did the same thing, I did some baking, and washing dishes. And I think this lady did all the cooking. And, well, I guess it was nice, sort of a like a vacation for me, too. But as soon as it was time to go to school I left and went to, went to Philadelphia. But that's the first, my first exposure to Quaker family. But they did have a retarded son, but the husband was a great businessman, and he worked downtown in Philadelphia somewhere. But anyway...

AI: Well, and Philadelphia must have been quite a change for you, also. Quite a change, quite different from Austin and different from Seattle.

RI: Oh yeah, temperature-wise, too, yeah. I, I think so. See, I'm from... I was from Seattle, and then the camps, so I wasn't really exposed to big city life. And even though, in Austin I was in a home, I didn't go around the town very much. Philadelphia, well, it's just a place... but it looked very different because they had a lotta row houses. It looked different. But you remember that being a student, I'm not that observant about what's going on in the world, I'm very focused just on continuing my education and, and taking care of myself without depending on my parents because they were still in, in internment camp. They were in Minidoka all that time. And I didn't tell you that when I went to Texas from camp I took my father's savings (book), I had to be able to take care of myself. Texas was not putting any student on relief. So we could not apply for relief. So we had to have our own money. And when I got that bank book, I used it, because I needed spending money, but I think I was very frugal because I got room and board and I didn't need anything. I didn't buy any clothes or anything. But I thought that this was my father's only savings and here he gives it to me to go to school. And of course I was very grateful. But more recently I sort of found out that no, that wasn't the only money he had. But in those days I thought that was all the money he had and it was a Washington Mutual Bank and I was spending it -- [laughs] -- penny at a time. But anyway, I'm, I've always been grateful to my dad for letting me bring his bankbook and I thought it was all he had, and here he's in camp with four other kids, and not knowing where he's going or what he's gonna do, but that means he believed in me and wanted me to finish school. So...

AI: That is really something.

RI: Yeah, well that's, that's why I said my father believed in education, even though I'm a female. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 29>

AI: Well, so how did you -- financially -- how did you make it through the medical school? Were you --

RI: Medical school? Oh, medical school, yes, I applied for a scholarship. And in those days, believe it or not, tuition was about four hundred -- I'm not sure whether it was four hundred or six hundred dollars a year, and now it's thousands. And I, I applied, and I think the first two years I got a scholarship for the tuition. But board and room I had to take care of myself. So the first year my youngest sister, Lillian, she came to Philadelphia with her girlfriend from camp and they worked in Philadelphia, rented an apartment near the medical school and I stayed with them. So actually, I got free board and they were supporting me. And I don't know whether I contributed towards the food but they both went to work downtown and came back and I ate with them and then I studied while... so the first year, that's what happened.

Then the second year there was a YMCA house and they have, they had rooms for about three students upstairs and during the evening they served an evening meal to the students. And they needed a manager, so I became the manager, managing the menus and the renters and sort of taking care of the house. So that way I got my board and room. But tuition I got a scholarship.

Then junior and senior year, well, I think I kept working there, but I don't know, I don't think I got scholarship all the way through, but I don't know where the money came. Oh, by then I probably started to work because after my second year my parents were back in Seattle and I came to Seattle and immediately got a job at a factory down, down on First Avenue making garments. And so I was at a power machine and I remember we were making jackets, sewing jackets. And I was supposed to be putting the buttonholes on the jacket so the jackets are fed to a machine and the machine goes rrrrrrrrr, cut, then it moves up, and that's going so slowly, but you can't make it go any faster. So in the meantime I had a book on the side and I let it go there and then, and I'd keep -- actually it was going that slowly. But you can't make it go any faster. But that's what I did one summer. So I made some money.

And then another summer... oh, in the meantime, my sister, Fran, relocated in Cleveland and she was married and so I stayed there and I worked at a factory in Cleveland sewing chevron -- what do you call those? -- emblems that sew onto the soldiers' sleeves. It must've been a wartime factory. But I worked there. I was a good, good worker but it was very boring and it was piecework and I'd go just as fast as I could. But that was hard work. But anyway, I made some money that way. So I must have paid for my own tuition in some way.

But in the meantime, Kazuko, Kazuko, when I got to medical school, Kazuko Uno was already there and I was starting my first year and she was going to start the second half of her first year. So she, she is a Seattle girl who went to UW and pre-med and then she got her degree just like my sister did. She was a year ahead of me. She got her degree at a temporary camp in California. And they lived in South Park. Her father was a farmer in South Park. And they were evacuated to... I don't know the name of that temporary camp. But, by the time she applied for medical school she was at Tule Lake. So she said at Tule Lake somebody in the hospital helped her apply to Woman's Medical. And I don't know whether she had problem getting into medical school but she, she was, she was a smart girl, smarter than I ever was. So probably there was no problem scholastically. But because her family could not afford to send her to school she worked her way, she got board and room from the hospital by working at night to be on call to do laboratory tests, blood tests, when, for instance somebody who had appendicitis goes in the middle of the night, well, you do a white count right away, that kind of thing. She was on call. So she, she did that and then she took half of the first-year classes. And when I got there she took the other half. So she and I were in the freshman class, but she had already had half the classes so I didn't see her that much. And then at night she was working and she was busy. But, from the second year she and I, we went through together, so she and I graduated together, Kazuko Uno. In the meantime, right now she lives in Issaquah and she's married to a hakujin boy but he is originally from Turkey. She met him in Detroit.

<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.

<Begin Segment 31>

RI: My prejudice was after we graduated, then I had a very difficult time getting an internship. All the other students got internships immediately but then, Kazuko and I just couldn't get into any hospital that we tried to apply to. So finally the dean of the medical school got internships for us and both of us got an internship in Pittsburgh, but two different hospitals, but within walking distance from each other so we could visit each other. But, we had no inkling about what these hospitals were like, but they were willing to take us so I think I remember that. When the time of applying for internships and everybody's happy, "Ooh, I got into this, this hospital or that hospital." "Wow, I'm gonna be in New York next, next year," and this kind of stuff and she and I, we didn't have anything. I remember going in to the women's restroom -- well, of course it was all women anyway -- and actually crying because I was so disappointed and so upset. But, you know, I don't cry easily and maybe that was the first time I cried. [Laughs] But it was that much of a disappointment.

And so Kazuko and I, we both interned at, in Pittsburgh. I went to St. Francis Hospital and I remember that it, it was a very big hospital, like about 600 beds and about twenty-five interns. And in those days, the interns working in the hospital wore this white top which had a button across the left shoulder, and a round collar. Well, there was no jacket that would fit me. So, I remember the summer before I went -- the internship starts July first and maybe I graduated end of May. So I might've had that one month, and I made about half a dozen of those tops out of sheets, white sheets, so that it'll fit me. And, you know, we had to change it all the time and they get dirty, but that's what I remember. And then, I probably, I think I was the only woman among all other men interns. But I kept up with them. I don't remember that they thought I wasn't good enough. But I remember as an intern, helping one surgeon and assisting him in surgery and he said to me one time, "You know, you're a very good assistant because you anticipate well." Which means that if he's gonna do something, I already know he's going to do it so I make it easy for him or, or expose the area, or something. Anyway, I remember he made that comment and I thought oh, that was nice of him to say that. [Laughs] He was a very good surgeon.

AI: So that year --

RI: That was my --

AI: That year of your internship was 1948, then?

RI: 1948. Yeah.

AI: Because you graduated --

RI: From July 'til the end of June.

AI: And --

RI: So after that I had to come to Washington to take my Washington State License.

AI: Well, while you were interning, did, had you already decided what kind of practice you would like to have or what, what, how you would like to practice medicine afterwards?

RI: Oh, yeah. Well, I think that I thought just internship may not be enough. I should do a residency so I applied for a family practice residency. And in those days, that kind of residency was just starting. And I wanted to come back to the Seattle area because my mother and father, they were already back in Seattle. Well, I applied to Providence, and Harborview, and where else? Well, I just remember those two. But immediately it was, "No, we can't take any women doctors. We don't have any quarters for them to stay." But that was just a excuse, huh? So anyway, I could not get an intern-, residency, so I came back to Seattle, Kazuko and I took our Washington State License exams. And then I started practice. But Kazuko applied for residency in Detroit and I think she applied for internal medicine residency. But, maybe soon into her internship, maybe a month or two, she became ill and she was diagnosed with pleurisy which is a, part of, something like TB, tuberculosis, so she was urged to take time off. So she went home, her parents were in Spokane. So she went home and rested for about half a year, then went back to Detroit to finish her residency. But after that internal medicine residency she changed to radiology. So she, she ended up in radiology, practicing, or practicing for a clinic in Oakland. But that's how she retired as a radiologist. But it was very important that your health is adequate and good and that's why, probably her health broke down because of too much studying and too much work and, but, see, I was very fortunate. I never got sick, one of the assets of my life.

<Begin Segment 32>

AI: So, today's April 4, 2003. We're continuing our interview with Dr. Ruby Inouye. I'm Alice Ito with Densho. Co-interviewing is Dee Goto and Dana Hoshide is videographer. And Dr. Ruby, yesterday we covered a lot of the early portion of your life, your family's background from Japan, your childhood and growing-up years, going to high school, starting college at University of Washington, then, of course the beginning of World War II and having to leave Seattle and go into the camps. And then your, the whole process of applying to get leave clearance and permission to go out of camp and the assistance you got to relocate to go to college in Texas, and then, of course, your difficulties, but eventually your ability to go to medical school. And we had gotten up to the ending of your internship year and I wanted to go back a little ways into your medical school years. And you were at the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia. So I wanted to ask a little bit about whether the fact that it was a women's medical school, if there might have been perhaps a different or more thorough approach to training, especially in some of the issues that especially affected women, such as pregnancy, childbirth, and related issues like birth control, which, of course, there was a much different attitude toward birth control and, at that time, as well as abortion, which, of course, at that time was not legal. So I was wondering if you could think back to that...

RI: Oh, yeah. Well, I always felt that our medical school emphasized women's issues like obstetrics and pediatrics. And those two fields I feel as though we were given better training, more hours of lectures, etcetera. And then, the doctors who were in charge of those departments mostly were women, so we were also exposed to lot of women doctors who were in charge of those areas. And in obstetrics, particularly, I felt that we were given very good training because later when I was in practice, I was told by the nurses where I was doing obstetrics that some of the other physicians didn't know anything about using forceps. Well that's, right now it's not in practice much, but then in those days we used a lot of forceps. But they said that, "Oh, these men doctors, they don't know anything about how to handle forceps." So I said to them, "Well, in our medical school we were given very good training on obstetrics especially." So, I feel that they were very strong in that field. Well, I think that they felt they had to be because it was a Woman's Medical College and then maybe patients tend to look at women as though they should be better-trained in those fields. Well, pediatrics also was a very strong field. So maybe many of the graduates, as they graduated, wondered whether they would specialize in obstetrics or pediatrics. And many of my co-students did specialize in obstetrics and pediatrics. I think the reason why I did not was because maybe I felt that going back to Seattle I needed just a general practice. But it was a matter of, at that time, trying to get internship and residency. Sometimes in internship is when you really decide which field you're interested in. Because then you get better training in the actual hospital work. But in school, we're given lot of training but not as much practical training. So...

<Begin Segment 33>

AI: And I was wondering if there were any other memorable incidents during your medical college years, during the training?

RI: During training? In, well, the first two years is mostly studying and book work and lectures. The last two years of medical school is training, going around to different hospitals and being exposed, maybe, many times just as observers, but then we were given actual training. And then we also went to Philadelphia General Hospital to do autopsies and that was sort of a, unpleasant kind of work, but then that way we were exposed to pathology, which is to see why people die. But at that time there was a big issue about tuberculosis and many of the students who were tuberculin negative -- when they, when we were admitted to school, right away they did tuberculin tests and then recorded as negative or positive. And probably most of us were negative, but by the time we graduated, almost everyone, maybe ninety-nine percent of the people turned positive because they were exposed to the germ, probably, we thought when we had to witness autopsies. But I was one of 'em who never turned positive. [Laughs] So I still claim that I was very healthy, or my immunity was very good. But that, those are some of the, the experiences that I recall in women's training.

But then another thing that occurred to me was that we had one lecture course in which a doctor -- and I'm not sure whether it was a male or a female doctor -- warned us that even if we are women doctors, "Don't pretend like you're a man and don't dress mannish and, you know, it's okay to be a female and not act like... just because you're a doctor doesn't have to be a male kind of profession and you could use your female assets for your profession." [Laughs] I remember that lecture course. And probably no other school would give such a lecture like that. I think it's because we were all women. So I remember that particularly.

AI: That is interesting. Well, I also was wondering if you, because that was such a long time ago, and attitudes, and even the laws have changed so much since then, if you could say a little bit about what the situation was then about birth control, and also abortions?

RI: I don't think that we discussed birth, abortions at all. I'm sure that it was legally -- illegal, so I don't think that there was any teaching about doing abortions or how we should feel about abortions. I think birth control was mostly using diaphragms, so there were no pills at that time. This is more than fifty years ago, so that was way before present teachings on birth control or abortions. All that came later.

AI: I was wondering if any of your teachers or professors had a positive attitude toward using a diaphragm or encouraged you to make that available to patients or whether it was rather, perhaps more negative or...

RI: You know, I don't think it was negative. I think that all the obstetricians taught us how to teach patients to use diaphragms. But other than that there was no other method, so there wasn't much choice.

DG: What about the alternatives like the present childbirth education, kind of...?

RI: I don't think there was too much emphasis on that at that time. I think a lot of that is more modern, after, but... most of the, most of my professors, teachers, were female physicians and I don't know if they themselves, lot of 'em probably were unmarried and did not have children themselves, but I'm not sure.

AI: Regarding the abortion, I was wondering whether there was any discussion about needing to possibly help save a woman's health or life perhaps after an illegal abortion. Perhaps it might appear that she had had a miscarriage or something like that... I was wondering if that came up at all?

RI: I don't remember any discussion like that, so probably it wasn't a very common or popular topic. We didn't, we didn't discuss those issues at that time, in those days.

DG: How many women's medical schools were there in the country at that time?

RI: I think that this was the only one.

DG: Only one?

RI: No, no other all-women. But this school subsequently became coeducational, like about, it might be about 1980. It became coeducational, mostly because funding from probably the U.S. government would not be available if it was just for women. It had to be available to both. So we became coeducational. And then...

DG: Was it a fairly old school at that time?

RI: Yes. Because I think that when I was there, the year after, they were celebrating maybe hundred-year anniversary, hundred, could be. So now it would be like hundred fifty years. But at the present it's not Woman's Medical College any more. The school has been merged into Drexel University. So it's the Department of Medicine at Drexel University, but it's called Hahnemann and Woman's Medical College of Drexel University, something like that. So I don't feel very close to that school anymore.

<Begin Segment 34>

DG: She was asking you about some of your memories, and earlier was referring back to when saw your first birth in camp.

RI: Uh-huh. Well, that was, my first birth in camp was, yes, before I started.

DG: So did you have similar kind of feelings?

RI: Experiences?

DG: Right.

RI: Oh, no. After, after I got really exposed to frequent births it was not scary or anything like that, no. It was just the first impression wasn't so good, but I think it quickly, that impression quickly got dispersed. [Laughs]

AI: Well, maybe for people who don't know how childbirth was handled in those days, could you describe what a typical childbirth experience would be in a hospital? What would usually happen when the woman came in?

RI: Oh, well, it has changed quite a bit. In those days I think it was okay to have anesthesia. So almost everybody went through anesthesia and there wasn't that much talk about "natural childbirth." Natural childbirth might have been carried out on the outside where there could have been teams of doctors who went out in the neighborhood and like midwives conducted home deliveries. I think that was still going on. But our teaching was mostly women in labor under anesthesia and had their babies and they had episiotomy which was a cut down the, the exit, the baby's head exit, and that was probably the accepted way. Whereas now, natural childbirth is much more common and I don't know about episiotomies.

DG: What kind of anesthesia?

RI: Um... must've been general anesthesia, like inhalation kind of anesthesia. I don't think -- we didn't have epidural or spinal kind of anesthesia.

DG: And that was a time when, a girl who was twenty-five was considered somewhat old?

RI: Well, of course from the standpoint now --

DG: To be having their first...

RI: It's hard to figure that twenty-five is old. I don't think so. Of course, we didn't have women who were as old as they are now, having babies. So, probably, up to thirty. After thirty maybe they were considered elderly primipara. "Elderly" being after thirty and "primipara" would be the first babies.

DG: Yeah, we, we were, in my training we called twenty-five "grand primip."

RI: [Laughs] "Grand?" Oh. Well, I think that maybe I'm thinking more about after I was in practice. I think thirty seemed like it was about the age when we started to consider that oh, they're getting a little old to have their first baby. You know, the second, third or fourth is okay, but... so, when I had my children I was in my thirties, so I'd consider myself elderly primip, thirty-two I was, but anyway.

<Begin Segment 35>

AI: Well, and then, of course after your medical school and you received your medical degree in 1948 and then went to your internship, which you talked about a little bit yesterday, at St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh. And I was wondering, at that time, you mentioned how much prejudice that you received when you had applied for your internship and had been refused.

RI: Uh-huh. My prejudice was in trying to get an internship in which the hospital grants you the permission to work in their hospital and obtain training. And the hospital is responsible for supporting you, giving you room and board and the training, so I suppose that the hospitals were the ones that were prejudiced against Japanese. I don't know about other Asians, but anyway, Japanese. But, I think once we got in, Kazuko and I, we worked well, so I'm sure that we got accepted readily. So my feeling is that Japanese people, even if we face prejudice, if, once we are in, if we work diligently that we could prove to other people that we're okay, you know, just as good as they are.

DG: Were there other minorities?

RI: In, in internship? No, I was the only one. I was the only one, even among residency staff. I was the only Japanese. I don't think there were -- no, there were no Chinese, no other minorities. Our medical school had one or two black students, but not in my class. There, I think almost every class might have had one Asian. It could've been Chinese or Japanese, but very few black students, one or two.

AI: And during your internship, I was wondering if you ever got any impression that some of the hospital staff felt that you were taking a place that should have gone to a man. Did that ever come up?

RI: I don't think I ever faced any feelings like that. I think that maybe -- because there were plenty of other men interns. Like, if I guess that there could have been like nineteen male interns and one female, I don't know that I displaced somebody, because I worked just as hard as they did. And they all accepted me. So, I never felt that once I got in that I was resented, and the hospital people accepted me readily. The nurses were nice to me and very helpful, so... of course, you know, since they said that they had no living quarters for female interns, I lived with the nurses in their, in their complex, wherever it was. So, I got to know the nurses, too.

AI: Another thing I was wondering about during your internship year, was whether you got any strange reactions from patients who might have been surprised that, first that they were being treated by a doctor who was a woman, but also a Japanese American?

RI: Well, I don't remember any negative reactions. So maybe I wasn't looking for any prejudice. But I don't remember anything negative. I don't remember that I was disliked or asked not to come back. In fact, I remember other incidents where they accepted me and, and accepted me like a friend. In fact, even now, every Christmas I get a Christmas card from one patient who was there. And she was from Pennsylvania in the coal mine area. And she, every year sends me Christmas card. And at that time I think she also gave me a gift that her sister had made. And we made good friends. Because as an intern, instead a, of a attending who comes to see a patient and goes back to the office, interns stick around and we were there, if something happens we'd go there again. So we'd become closer to a patient than maybe someone else might. So, I think they... I don't remember any rejection of any kind. So, it might have been, I might have been the first Japanese female intern there at that hospital. I probably was.

AI: Well, was there anything else about your internship year that comes to mind or that was memorable in some way?

RI: No, the internship was in Pittsburgh. And Pittsburgh at that time had lot of coal mines close by and so it was always very dusty. And when I ever had a chance to go out, outside, go downtown, take a bus then I knew that my hair felt like it had coal dust in it, and my face felt grimy and all that. So, I think it's been cleaned up since then. But in those days it was still part of the coal, coal mine area.

AI: Well, so at the hospital, then, did you see miners who were suffering from lung disease? Or, what kinds of things did, illnesses did you see there?

RI: I don't know that I was impressed with any special disease, because, in internship is called rotating internship where you are put from one, one area to another, maybe surgery, obstetrics, medicine, pediatrics, like that. So, I don't remember being especially impressed with respiratory diseases, but there probably were. But I don't know whether this particular hospital might not have been particularly noted for respiratory diseases. It was called St. Francis Hospital and it was a Catholic hospital. And there were a lot of nuns who were around, nursing.

DG: Were there any things that you felt, being Asian, that you could kind of share with some of the others as far as how you approached people or how --

RI: When I was an intern? No, not particularly. Probably more as a female, which is, I would say, it's hard to describe, but little bit closer to a person than a male would approach. I don't know how to describe it, but, female -- not wiles -- but female... sensitivity. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 36>

AI: Well, so then at the end of your internship, then you had planned already to go back to Seattle. So, could you just tell us what happened then after you ended your internship, and you're leaving Pennsylvania and you're making your way back to Seattle.

RI: Well, of course I wanted to get more training in family practice, actually. So, like I said, I applied to the Seattle hospitals but I was unable to get any assignment, so I couldn't help it, I had to start practice. And I always felt that one year of internship after training in today's consideration, is not very much. Almost every doctor receives about three years of training after medical school, which is residency in some form, whether it's family practice or medicine or obstetrics, but since I only had that one year I always felt that maybe my training wasn't as complete and not as good. So, whenever, when, when I did start practice I always felt that whenever I had a patient who had some complicated diseases, I'm going to get consultant. So after a while I think that the Seattle people thought that, "Oh, that Dr. Inouye, well, at least she doesn't think she knows everything and she refers you to another specialist." So they, they seemed to have liked that idea. But that was the reason why I didn't hesitate. And besides, I felt that Seattle was a very good medical center. By that time, University of Washington had a medical school and actually, when I started, University of Washington Medical School started its first class in 1946, so it wasn't even existing. So, by then there was this nice medical school and Children's Hospital, and there were a lot of good specialists around, and so I figured that it's to my advantage to be sure to refer patients to good doctors. So I think it was an advantage.

DG: You started your practice what year?

RI: In 1949. And my first office was in that Jackson building above Higo variety store. And the Murakamis had that building and they were very solicitous, helpful to a starting doctor. And I rented two rooms for forty dollars a month. And of course, I had to have some renovation. But I think one of my father's friends, being a carpenter, helped put up partitions and that's where I started. And I was there for almost two years. But about that time since my marriage, I left Seattle for a short time, for about a year, and then came back again.

AI: Well, could you tell us a little more detail about your very first year in practice and starting out?

RI: My first year in practice. Well, I, okay, I thought, "Well, this is a new venture," and I was a little bit nervous about starting, but you know, this Japanese community is so supportive. I think that most of the patients felt like, "Well, this is a Seattle girl. She grew up among us, and she's like... I felt like the Isseis were saying, "Well, she's just like our daughter, so let's go and support her." And that's how I felt that these Isseis felt. No wonder I have special love for the Issei people. When they came they, they, instead of calling me "Doctor" -- oh, of course, most of 'em called me "Doctor," but it was either Ruby-san or, and then I'd call them obasan or ojisan, and you know, they were like my mother's friends, my mother and father's friends. So I think they were very protective of me. And then since they were speaking Japanese I learned a lot of Japanese from them. And of course, when I first started I didn't know the Japanese words for a lot of the anatomical parts. So I'd say, "Now, let's see. 'Lung,' what is 'lung?'" Oh, hai. Okay, hai is "lungs," and "heart" is shinzo, and "kidneys" are jinzo. Then I'd say, "Well, what's 'pancreas'?" They don't know what "pancreas" is. So then, later I found out it's called suizo, and then "spleen" they don't know anything about. I forgot what "spleen" was. But that's how it was. "Stomach" is i, most people knew what i was. But they were also very helpful, so I learned a lot of Japanese that way. And after a few years, my mother said to me, "Ruby, your Japanese is getting so good. Jozu ni natta." I says, "Oh yes, I'm learning it from these patients." [Laughs] So, anyway, I have a special... oh, what should I say? Special heart feelings for these Issei people.

<Begin Segment 37>

DG: Do you remember your first paying patient?

RI: Yeah, my first patient actually was a hakujin boy. He was a teenager who was playing athletics and injured himself and over the telephone, according to the appointment, he's hurting in his back. Well, until he came I worried about, "I wonder if it's polio? I wonder if it's..." [Laughs] I mean, I'm thinking of all these little, very serious diagnoses. But when he came, when he said that he, he was playing soccer or something and fell and injured his back, well, then it became just a backache or something like that. [Laughs] But yes, I remember my first patient.

Then gradually, I think that I began to have more and more obstetrical patients who began to come because of my ability to speak Japanese. And then at about that time, lot of the servicemen came back with Japanese brides. And then they found that there is a doctor who speaks Japanese, so of course that was a very big advantage. And so I took care of them. And you know, there's nothing like being able to tell a doctor your own complaints and being able to express them yourself, because when you have to interpret, have a interpreter, it just takes that feeling away. And I certainly felt that when, since I referred a lot of patients to doctors, other doctors, when they were hospitalized, of course I went to see them, too. And many times I would be at a bedside along with the consulting doctor. And so when the consulting doctor goes by himself to see the patient they said, "Well, how are you, Mrs. So-and-so," and they say, "Oh, fine. I'm okay." When I come along they say, "Oh, koko ga itai." "Oh, asoko ga itai," and they tell me really all the details, but, Japanese people in front of other hakujin people, they don't want to express negative feelings so they say, "Oh, everything's fine." But when I came along they told me the truth. And so I'd be telling the other doctor exactly what it was or I'd put it in the notes, the hospital notes so that they'll know what the real feeling is. So, I've always felt that that was an advantage. And sometimes when the other consulting doctor and I are together and I'm asking the patient questions in Japanese, I notice that these hakujin doctors are looking at me and looking at the patient. And they're sort of marveling that we could communicate so well. [Laughs] So, I'm sure that it was an advantage. And then, every now and then, when, for instance a patient has appendicitis and I call the surgeon and the patient gets the surgery done, then years later I said, "Now who was that doctor that operated on you?" And they say, "I don't know, but you were there." So I say, "Oh, yeah, it was Dr. So-and-so," but they don't remember who operated on them, but they know I was there.

So I always assisted. Every surgery I assisted, and I knew exactly what was going on so that later, when the patient came to see me, I would tell them exactly what happened because I was there. So, to me it was an advantage, but that's because I was a family physician. And internists, specialists in internal medicine don't assist in surgery. So I loved to assist in surgery and I felt that I was very good because my hands, I would say, I'm kiyo, that means hands are what? I mean good, I mean, I could use my hands well. So then I remember one time I was assisting in surgery and there was a big kidney stone. Well, by big, you know, I would say maybe like that. And this surgeon who was operating was big, tall, like six-footer and big hands and all that. And he was trying to put his finger in through a track and trying to get that stone but he couldn't get it. So he said, "Ruby, you put your finger in there and get it." And oh, I put my finger in there and got it right out. [Laughs] So I figured there was an advantage that way.

Then another thing I remember about surgery is my assisting, I'm short, and then lotta times the doctors are close to six feet, they say, "Okay, here comes Ruby. Now bring the stools." I said, "I think I need three stools, three stacking stools," because this doctor is real tall. [Laughs] And so then, I'd be eye-to-eye with that surgeon when we're operating because we're always opposite of each other. That kind of thing, which is sort of funny, but anyway... I remember one time, one surgeon said, "Better put a rope around this doctor so that she won't fall into the incision." [Laughs] I thought, wow, but he was joking with the nurses about that, but... I enjoyed surgery because I felt that I was very good at tying knots and helping with retracting and holding this and that and...

<Begin Segment 38>

AI: Well, now, after you came back to Seattle, I wanted to back up a little bit and ask what was, what was your, what were your parents doing after they came back to Seattle, they still had their house and yesterday you told about how they had, what they had to go through to get back into your family house.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: But were they able to go back into business again?

RI: Yes, well, they, they came back to the house. And I remember between my second and third year I came back and stayed with them at that house. But I think eventually they were in business by taking over an apartment house on Minor and Stewart Avenue. So they went back into business, but they moved into that apartment complex in order to run the place. And eventually they sold that house. Then when I came back, my father bought another apartment house, so I stayed there for a while. So my father was a businessman, so I guess that he was always into something, but of course my mother was always helping him too, so she was always put to work getting rooms ready or cleaning up or something like that. So they were always around. But oh, when I started practice, my father said to me, "Now, Ruby, you are starting your practice. Be sure to set your schedule so that you'll take your vacations, take your days off, and be sure to stick by it." So I said, "But Papa, you know, I hardly have any patients, I'm not busy at all." He said, "Soon enough you'll be busy so you start with the right schedule and you'll, you'll take care of yourself." And later I was very appreciative of what he said, because he was thinking about me and my health. And it served me good.

DG: Did he help to finance your, setting up your office and equipment?

RI: I don't remember that he had to finance me... well, of course he had to because I didn't have any money, did I?

DG: Right.

RI: So maybe the first rental --

DG: What kind of equipment did you buy?

RI: Well, let's see. I had to have a table, examining table, and I had to have laboratory equipment to do blood tests and urine tests. I don't know where I got the money, but I must have got it from him because I certainly didn't have any, because internship did not pay anything. We had to work for free and I remember at Christmas time we got a Christmas gift of twenty-five dollars. Well, twenty-five dollars in those days meant a lot more than now. But I think the residents, interns get paid nowadays, because a lot of the residents nowadays are married and have families. But I'm sure that he had to help me. And after a few months I remember doing the accounting for myself and found that I was breaking even. So I don't think I lost money right away, but I don't remember even paying him back. [Laughs] But that's how parents are. You sort of take them for granted but they're always there for us, huh? I really appreciate them.

DG: Did you hire some assistants?

RI: Yes. I hired a secretary. She was fresh out of high school. In fact, she's still around Seattle. And she was my secretary, made the appointments. But she didn't do any, any laboratory work or anything like that. I did everything myself, because I wasn't busy. Oh, and then the first, first half-year or so I wasn't busy so I also moonlighted and worked in a hospital, took calls at night to give anesthesia to labor patients, pregnant, women in labor. And that's where I met my husband, at the hospital. He was interning there trying to get training so that he could apply for license in Washington State. And he was from China.

AI: And what was his name?

RI: His name was Evan Shu. S-H-U. But his English was terrible because he had come from China in 1948, I think. And he really went to California to do post-graduate work in ears/nose/throat. And he was intending to go back to China after he got this graduate degree, I guess, at Loma Linda, and then he couldn't go back because the Communists took over. So he was stuck in the United States and he was, I think he was raised, I would call him like a botchan, you know, where he came from a wealthy family who had servants and he had everything. So all of a sudden he was cut off from all economic help because I think his parents were sending money to him. So he had to fend for himself and had to work and then it was a matter of trying to get licensed in the United States and so he was in Seattle at this hospital doing internship. And when I was moonlighting, giving anesthesia, he was around there.

DG: Which hospital?

RI: It was called Seattle General Hospital, downtown, on Fifth and Marion. And when I started practice I did a lot of my work there because one of my friends from medical school, who graduated with me, was at that hospital. She had that hospital, so she helped me get, get permission to practice there. Her name was Naomi Pettingill, but she was also a missionary to India. But she's not around now. She has since died. But that's where I used to practice a lot.

<Begin Segment 39>

AI: Well, so at that time, were your father or mother talking to you at all about getting married or having a family?

RI: No, they never talked to me about getting married.

AI: Because I remember --

RI: Why would they tell -- yeah, they did tell me that, before I started going into pre-medical training, that my role as a female was to get married. But after I was in practice they never said anything like that. Oh, I guess that, it just was determined that I was a career woman.

AI: But as it turned out, you met Evan Shu and, so, how did your relationship develop with him in that his English was not very good and he was from China...

RI: Well, when I look back on it, I think that it was, instead of being mutual, he probably was the pushy person. Maybe because he was a displaced person and not very comfortable in America, maybe he felt that he could get more Americanized with me. So, anyway, I kinda think I got talked into it but anyway, that's part of looking back. [Laughs] And since he's not here to defend himself, I, I probably shouldn't say too much more. But apparently, in China -- this is what I found out later -- he was engaged to another physician, or about-to-be physician, woman physician. And then when he came to America I guess that maybe she married somebody else. So maybe he was looking for somebody in the same profession. But, he always had very lofty ideas and he says, "Oh, we'll build a hospital together," and all kinds of things like that, but...

AI: And so when did you get married?

RI: I got married in 1951. So I was thirty years old. And at that time he told me he was two years older, but he was lying because he didn't want to appear like he's the same age, but he was same age as me. He was, he's two months older. But, you know, thirty is pretty old to be getting married around that time, because my friends were all married. But I wasn't really intending to get married, or looking for anybody.

AI: But you did. Well, and so 1951, and then what, what happened after your --

RI: Well, so then afterwards he, after we got married he did one year, another year of internship in a Colorado hospital. And then he was going to Eastern State Hospital in Washington, in the state of Washington, so that's when I quit my practice and joined him and I also got a residency at this Eastern State Hospital -- actually it was a psychiatric hospital. But it was mainly so that I could, we could be together. And that's when I was pregnant. So then, with pregnancy I stopped my intern-, my residency, and we came back to Seattle and I decided that I'm going to start practicing again. So then I was a wife and mother with a baby so I, restarted my practice and this time I was above Dr. Nakamura, the dentist's office. And my sister took care of the baby. In the meantime, my husband got another internship in Tacoma, so that he was commuting between Seattle and Tacoma, weekends, coming home. But he was still having a difficult time trying to get his training and to qualify for taking the Washington State License. It took him a long time to get a license from Washington State. So, in the meantime I was doing most of the work.

DG: So your office was there on, on, right here...

RI: On Jackson and Sixteenth, uh-huh, above Dr. Nakamura. I was there until about 1963, from 1953 until 1963, about ten years there, until we built our new building.

<Begin Segment 40>

AI: Your, your first baby was a boy.

RI: Yes. My son? Yes. He was a boy.

AI: And was it 1953 that he was born?

RI: Uh-huh, '53.

AI: And so, and you were saying that your sister would take care of him while you were practicing.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: And then, then after him you had two more children?

RI: Oh yes, two more daughters, yeah. But each time, well, since my husband wasn't really settled down anywhere because he, he was trying to get his license, I think I was the bread-earner and I was also taking care of the family. And since I'm the American and know how to get along, my husband was not really doing a lot of things at home. I mean, he... I don't think he was doing fifty percent of the housework or anything like that. But I think that I had the ability to be pretty well-organized and take care of things, so somehow we were getting along okay. And my children, as I got my children I began to feel that just because I'm in a profession I don't want to be neglecting them, I don't want them to be getting into trouble, so I tried very hard to be sure to participate in whatever activities they were in. So when the schools had open house or parents day, well, I was sure to go, most of the time it was in the evenings anyway. My son belonged to the Boy Scouts at Baptist Church, and who do you think went? I went. My husband did not go. My daughter was in Girl Scouts and of course they were selling Girl Scout cookies and she said that whenever I made house calls the kids go with them and I used to tell her, "Well, maybe you could go in and sell Girl Scout cookies" -- [laughs] -- like that. But they made a lot of house calls with me.

And one time I remember that my son, Evan -- I don't know how old he was -- he might have been three or four years old. I took him on a house call and I told him to sit down over there and I'm going into the sick room. But whenever I go on a house call with my kids, most people pay more attention to the children and they, they want to give them soda pop or something. And I said, "I came to see the patient," but first the kids get settled down and then I'd go in. Well, my son went with me one time. When I got home, in his pocket was this knife, but it was a dinner knife, a butter knife or something like that. I said, "Where did you get that?" "Oh, it was on the table. I liked it so I took it." I said, "My goodness, you could never do something like that." So of course, right away the next day I had to bring it back and apologize for it. But I think he learned a lesson. It was a shiny knife, and it's not that he needed a knife, but he liked it. So, it was a matter of trying to teach him something. But he doesn't remember it. Nowadays I tell him about it, he doesn't remember that.

But my children made lotta house calls, as I said, and they had to sit in the car a lot and wait while I went in the hospital to do my rounds. And that's when it was that runaway car. One, one Saturday I was making a house call and I left them in the car and the car was at a slight incline hill and I went in and did my whatever, visiting, and came out and I couldn't find the car. And then down the street was the car stopped and people gathered around and I found that whether I didn't pull the hand brakes or whether one of the kids -- there were two little kids -- whether one of them released the brake I don't know what happened. But anyway, the car started to roll slowly down the street. And fortunately, there was a teenager sitting in front of his house, probably next door, or next-next door and he jumped into the car and pulled the brake and stopped it before it got to the bottom of the hill. And after that, every time some mother comes into my office and I say, "Oh, did you bring your child?" And they say, "Oh, he's in the car." "Don't leave the child in the car. Be sure to bring him in." I used to warn every one of my patients like that because of my bad experience. So, never leave your kids in the car by themselves. You can't tell what they'll do. [Laughs]

AI: What a frightening experience.

DG: Did you worry at all, when you made house calls, about being exposed to germs and things, the kids?

RI: The kids being exposed? No. The kids were never exposed because they were never in the same room as the patient. But I never worried about catching anything from my patients. And as said, my immunity is so good I don't remember ever catching anything from any patient, and people were coughing in my face, I was taking care of people with fever and all that, but I didn't get sick. I was always there. I'll tell you, during my years of practice I was absent from work two days total. The first time I had a sore throat with fever so I stayed home. It was a Friday. So by Monday I was able to go back to work. The second time, I got up in the morning, I was very dizzy and I still wanted to go to work but then I was nauseated and so I had to stay home. And that also was a Friday. By Monday I was okay, so I went back to work. But, that's what kept me going. I think my immunity is very good. So I'm very fortunate.

DG: Do you remember any other patients, that specifically, some incident about something that one of the patients you treated...

RI: How they were treated?

DG: No, any incidents particularly, special patients that you remember?

RI: Oh, well, maybe I remember more some of the patients that maybe I don't really like, you know, the obnoxious patients. Well, I used to tell my secretary, "Ooh, she made appointment, oh gosh," Okay. So when that patient comes in I try to be extra nice. I don't like this person, so I'm going to do double the duty of trying to be nice. So it always worked out okay. That was my theory, that, I don't want to show on my face that I don't like this person. Oh, it's somebody who's complaining all the time, so then I try to be extra nice, listen more carefully, and give good advice. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 41>

AI: Okay, so we're continuing with Dr. Ruby, and before the break, one of the things you told us about was how some of your own experiences with your kids affected the advice that you gave to your patients, some of them. And I was wondering if there were any other examples of things, for example, that you experienced when you had your three kids and bringing them up, that affected the advice you gave to your patients?

RI: About, according to my own experience with children?

AI: Yes, right, because, of course, you had your training when you were younger before you had had any kids.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: And you mentioned that a lot of your training was from women doctors who had not had children, either.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: So I was wondering what --

RI: Oh, yes. Well, when I was pregnant... when I think about it now, I think, "Well, I guess I didn't know any better," but I must've looked terrible because I was so short. [Laughs] Big. But I remember when I was pregnant with my second child, I must have been about seven or eight months pregnant, and in the middle of the night I went to Providence Hospital one day because I was called to deliver a patient. Well, at the entrance, the nurses were gonna admit me. They thought I was the patient coming in, in labor. But I said, "No, I came to deliver somebody else, they called me and she's almost ready for delivery." So that was one instance.

Then, another time, when I was pregnant and I was talking to another physician over the phone, and, "No, I don't think I'll go because I'm pregnant so I shouldn't be doing..." then he said, "Oh, that's too bad, you're pregnant." And I always resented what he said. Why would he say that that's too bad just because he's a man and he can't be pregnant, maybe. [Laughs] But anyway, I remember that comment from a male physician. Then another thing about being female, is that in a doctor's office there's also always lots of drug representatives, pharmacy representatives, who come trying to tell you about new medicines. And one day, one of 'em said to me, "How come there's so many men sitting around here?" I said, "Well, they're my patients." And he said, "I thought women physicians only treated women." I said, "No. I have lot of men physicians -- men patients." And he was so surprised. So then I was thinking that lot of my male patients, I think they feel more comfortable with a woman. Maybe they don't feel as threatened, maybe they, they're not as scared -- well, they're always scared, anyway, but maybe they feel more comfortable, maybe I'm sort of like their mothers or sisters, or something like that. So I always felt that having a male patient was fine, that they were comfortable.

But I remember one man telling me -- I think he was in his seventies -- and I examined patients without a nurse assisting me, I do everything myself. I help them get dressed and undressed and all that. And I was examining his chest and listening to his lungs. He said, he said to me, "If I were a younger man, your feeling me would get me aroused," or something like that. He said it in Japanese. I says, "Oh," and then I just went on doing whatever I did. But you know, from then on I was trying to be very careful. But at least he told me that, which was fine. But I never hesitated doing full examinations on male or female, you know, whatever needed to be done, I did. And they accepted whatever I did, so there was no problem.

I always felt that treating the Isseis was a teaching episode, too, because many of them, while they were being examined they'd talk about their lives and how they are at home. And one Issei lady told me that she came to Seattle as a bride about nineteen years old and immediately her husband started to call her "baasan." And she said she was so insulted but that was the Japanese male ego, calling a young nineteen-year-old a grandma, and ordering her to do this and that. And, and she was telling me about her early life so they told me a lot about their stresses and what hardships they went through. So it was very interesting. I, I really liked the Issei people because I always felt that gosh, they were so trusting, whatever I told them, they accepted. I don't remember anyone refusing to get an operation because they didn't want to, or, you know, not -- I mean, going against medical advice. I don't remember anybody refusing anything. And I thought, "My gosh they're really trusting me so much, I better be very sure that I'm giving them the best information." [Laughs] So I always felt that responsibility to them because they didn't question whatever I asked them or whatever I told them. And if I didn't know I would refer them to another doctor. So...

<Begin Segment 42>

DG: Were there a lot of medical conferences and things that...

RI: Medical conferences? At the hospitals?

DG: No, for yourself, to get new information, or...

RI: Oh, yes.

DG: Uh-huh.

RI: Well, the hospitals always had... well, Providence Hospital always had a, was it Tuesday morning? From seven to eight, and Seattle General had a... maybe it was Thursday morning from seven to eight or something like that. Once a week kind of discussing some medical problem, lectures. Besides that there were... I also belonged to the Family Practice organization and several times I went down for some conference that was about three days, one time in New Orleans, and one time in Los Angeles. But I didn't go every year because it wasn't possible for me. But as I said, since my father had advised me to be sure to take vacations... my husband was always trying to get us to take vacations and now, I would be thankful to him that he did make me do it but I'm always worried, "Well, I can't go that time, because so-and-so is due, I have two obstetrical patients, I shouldn't go." But he said, "Well, we have to go, the kids are on vacation," and all that. And I'd go, sorta unwillingly, but later I'm always glad I did because that way we spent time with the kids and did, did some traveling, but it was always a stress for me because I worried about my OB patients. But they all came along okay.

<Begin Segment 43>

RI: But to this day, I think the thing I cherish the most about my practice is, well, aside from the Issei, contact with the Issei people, are my deliveries. I loved to see my babies, I call them, and some of 'em are fifty years old. But I like to see them doing well, that, not necessary the president of the United States, but doing well, and accomplishing things. But, I would say that since I started to take records... I don't remember, or I don't have a record of the, my first couple years, but after that I think I had a record of about 1,020 babies that I delivered, and lot of 'em are around now. Oh, one of the things that my children used to tell me was that, my children were in class with a lot of the babies that I had delivered and they were friends. So I think they were sort of proud that I was their doctor because maybe a friend of my daughter's would say, "Oh, your mom's my doctor," or something like that. So they were proud of that.

And then, one time, my daughter, my youngest daughter was at Bailey Gatzert and she was telling me that she and her friend were constantly being hassled by another girl in their class who was asking them for their lunch money. So that had happened several times. And she said, "Oh, but," she said, "if you don't give them the money, she's gonna beat me up." So I was incensed by it. So then I took the time and went to Bailey Gatzert and talked to -- well, the secretary was Sachi -- and then she called the principal in and I told her about it. And of course she called this girl who was bothering them and punished her, I don't know how. But after that, my daughter said to me, "Mom, I'm so glad you went and talked to them about it," that I cared, you know? And then this other friend, I guess her mother wouldn't do it but my daughter was proud that I went. So I tried to be very careful to stick up for my kids. And so I think that to this day they're, they're alright, and they're doing well, and... I'm glad because that was what I would have worried about my working so that I made sure that they were taken care of.

DG: How many hours of sleep did you think you got those days? [Laughs]

RI: Oh, at least six. No, I don't feel deprived. Well, because I was healthy. If I stayed up at night delivering a baby, the next day I'm sure I made it up. And most of the times babies came in the middle of the night. There wasn't many instances when I had to take off from the office when patients are waiting in the waiting room and I had to go deliver a baby. Well, every now and then I had to do that, but I said, "Well, I'll be back in one hour or two hours," and some of 'em would reschedule, but a lot of 'em waited, but most of the babies came at night. But I don't know if they do now, but maybe they're scheduled better now.

AI: Well, you had your hands full for quite a while because your, your own kids were born 1953, '54 and '57.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: So you, as you described, you had so many things --

RI: Yeah, I had lotta...

AI: -- to take care of.

RI: I think that, fortunately, I'm very well-organized. And so I, when I look back I wonder how I did all that. But, I think what I disliked the most was having to figure out what to eat for that night. Sometime during the day I'm thinking, "Gosh, what shall we eat tonight?" And the first thing I do when I get home is, before I take my coat off I'm opening the refrigerator door trying to get food out and figure out what to eat. But as soon as the kids were old enough I started to assign them one day a week when they're gonna cook. And so, it could be something very simple like hamburger or... but I remember that my son would ask the cook at school for a recipe, and he brought home several recipes, one time it was a chili recipe. And -- [laughs] -- to this day I have that recipe. But they were interested in knowing what they should cook, but I made them responsible for that. My husband wasn't a good cook. And he wasn't very good at doing any kind of housework. But I'm sure that he did a lot of chauffeuring and taking kids to school when I'm not there or being home, anyway.

<Begin Segment 44>

AI: Well, I was wondering, as your kids started getting a little bit older, did you ever tell them about what happened during World War II or that you and the family had been put into the camps?

RI: Yeah, I think that, you know, we... I have a big family with a lot of sisters in family, so, we had lotta get-togethers and I think at those times when we mentioned "camp," they'd wonder what "camp" is and, and little by little some stories came out. But I think, one time when my youngest daughter was in high school, she had to write a paper so she wrote about evacuation. And so maybe some, some of the stories came out then. But little by little they knew something. They heard their relatives talking about it, too, so they knew something.

AI: And I was wondering if, if any of your kids ever faced any prejudice because they were Japanese American?

RI: I don't think they've, I don't think they've faced prejudice. I don't remember their ever saying anything. Well, let's see, they went to grade school, John Muir, I think there was quite a Asian population there, and Franklin High, there was lots of Asians. So, and they went to Baptist Church Sunday School, I think they were used to a lot of Asians. And I don't think that they had much prejudice. I think they stuck together with other Asians.

<Begin Segment 45>

DG: What about the fact that you married a Chinese, as far as your own family was concerned?

RI: Well, at first my father said, "Are you sure that he doesn't have a wife in China?" And he told her, told him, "No," and he had to take his word for it because there was no way he could communicate with them. But, maybe I might have been one of the few intermarriages at that time. But they didn't say too much. Maybe they felt it, but they didn't express it, and I didn't hear too much negative things.

DG: There were several Japanese families that disowned their children, almost, because they married a Chinese.

RI: Uh-huh.

DG: At that time.

RI: But you know, my husband died two years ago. But at his funeral, his Chinese relatives that are, who are here, got up and said something like, "When Uncle Evan was going to marry a Japanese girl, his relatives in China thought, 'Wow, going to marry a Japanese girl.'" Here China and Japan were at war, that Mongolian War, and so the Chinese people had prejudice against the Japanese. But see, we didn't know that. In fact, it was the opposite here. But they were worried about his marrying a Japanese, but I didn't know that until his relatives told me that. But, it could be.

AI: Yes, because the times were different there.

RI: Uh-huh.

AI: And so some people's attitudes were different, kind of.

RI: Oh yeah. Since then there's been a lotta intermarriages. In fact, my two, two kids are married to Caucasians now, so there's no problem like that. I think my mother is very liberal, was very liberal, and she, she used to advise some of her friends who were objecting to their kids intermarrying and she'd tell them, "Well, don't, just, don't be so old-fashioned. They're okay." And she used to advise them. So I think it was okay.

AI: I'm wondering, when your kids were younger, did they ever ask you or your husband about what were they, if they were Japanese, they were Chinese, they were American, did they ever ask questions like that?

RI: I don't think they questioned it, but they used to tell their friends that, "My mother's Japanese, my father's Chinese, but I'm both," or something like that. Well, they'd make something, "My mother, my father's Chinese, my mother's Japanese, and I'm all over," or something like that. They used to make some kind of funny thing like that. I don't know, maybe I got it turned around, but something. I don't think that they were ashamed or anything like that. It just, it was a fact of life and they assumed it, but, no problem that way.

<Begin Segment 46>

AI: Well, you know, as, as time went on, you, you and your husband were active in community activities, also. You started mentioning some of them. But at some point did you mention that he had been interested in starting a hospital or some kind of medical institution?

RI: Uh-huh. My husband was a idealist and he was always into thinking about something to do. And actually, he's the one who started this office building that we have. And so, along with another doctor we bought that, bought that property and built the nursing home -- I mean, the office building along with Dr. Toda, Larry, not Larry, the, Terrance Toda. And after a few years we bought them out so my husband and I were the sole owners. Then he started to think about maybe building a hospital or a nursing home. And he thought that, at first, that it should be adjacent to the office building in the back. So then we purchased property from the next door owner, I think there was a old house. So we purchased that. And by then he was collaborating with a pharmacist, a Chinese pharmacist, Mr. Wong. And so they started to talk about building a nursing home. And I don't know why he would think that, but I think it's sort of a Chinese feeling that a doctor in China has his own hospital. So that's what he thought he should have.

Then the two of 'em decided that that property wasn't big enough so they bought more property on Seventeenth between Yesler and Washington Street. They bought property there. And pretty soon they got another family to cooperate with them and we all started to talk about building a nursing home and applying for certificate of need. And by that time there was also interest among the Japanese population that there's a need for a nursing home specifically for Japanese patients. And you know, people like Tosh Okamoto and Tomio, they were very active in trying to get that kind of interest. And they heard that we had been trying to do the same thing. So anyway, the short of it is that we stopped our project and they eventually decided on the block where Keiro is now. And our property, one half belonged to me so I donated it to Keiro and then Keiro paid my husband for the other half of the property, and I don't know how much it was, maybe $17,000 or something like that. When I say Keiro, I mean like Issei Concerns or whatever that organization was called at that time. And so, we helped them through the process of getting a certificate of need, and that's not a very easy process, but we had been familiar with it so gradually the nursing home was built. Oh, but that was the second nursing home. The first one was down by Twenty-fourth near Massachusetts. But that, that one has a different history. So this is the second part of trying to build a bigger one.

DG: So what year or years are we talking about?

RI: It was more like 1975, around there.

AI: You know --

RI: Because we are celebrating twenty-five years or more, yeah.

<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.

<Begin Segment 48>

DG: Did you have quite a few patients at the old Keiro?

RI: Oh yes, at the old Keiro? Yes.

DG: On Massachusetts?

RI: Uh-huh. Let's see, the old Keiro had how many patients? Was it more like fifty or sixty? I probably had about almost half, half of 'em were my patients.

DG: So it was sort of a natural transition, then, for you to think about building the new one?

RI: Uh-huh. Well, the new one wasn't exactly my idea. Maybe the first one was more... I might have been more involved into helping to get that.

DG: Okay, that's what I was wondering.

RI: But the second one was just because the old one was too small. So the second one probably didn't have any problem trying to get approval from the community, it was mostly money-raising because they wanted to...

DG: Well, let's back up. You were saying that your husband wanted to build a hospital, and so that was before the old one was built, or, I mean, established?

RI: I think so. I'm getting all my time mixed up, too. But I, I think that we were more involved property-wise with the new nursing home.

DG: Right. But as far as establishing the nursing home, you were more involved with the old one?

RI: The first one. Yeah.

DG: Right. That's what I was wondering.

RI: So I don't... yes, that's right.

DG: So, so you were, it's the same people, though, that organized to buy that first property?

RI: The first property, well, many of them are deceased now. But the first property was renovating an old -- I think it used to be an old, could have been an old nursing home that was empty. And I think the property was bought. And most of the renovating was done by volunteers, painting it and refurbishing it for, for the, was it sixty-bed? But it soon became apparent that it was too small, not, not enough room, a long waiting list. So...

DG: So, did that come out of your understanding of the needs as you were visiting the different nursing homes? Is that...

RI: Oh, I'm sure. I don't think I was the one who started anything like that. I think the needs were felt by many people who had parents here and there in different homes. And there were other doctors, too. Well, Dr. Uyeno was pretty active in those days, too. Not, not many other Japanese doctors. Dr. Egashira was in practice pretty short time because he had a bad accident.

DG: I guess I'm trying to establish who approached who. Because I...

RI: I think, in the beginning I was not the instigator for a nursing home. I think they were community leaders who decided that there was a need for a nursing home essentially for Japanese people. So they were, there were several people. I think Tosh Okamoto was one of the leaders, I'm sure, because I remember going to a meeting down at Vet's Hall, I think, about needing, the need for a nursing home. So he recruited several other people to help and I know that I must've had some input in it because...

DG: Were you, were you already thinking in terms of you had the property here at that time, or were you still negotiating for properties with your husband at... what is the timing on that?

RI: Oh, the old... well, I think that our, our office building was in the 1960s, so later in the 1960s is when we were buying property. And then, the first nursing home, the old Keiro started like about 1975. So in-between times we might have been working on a possible nursing home. And by then, maybe our interest was transferred to the bigger property by Yesler, Yesler and Seventeenth. And since we had the property, then when the old Keiro became too small they started to look for areas that would be suitable for a bigger nursing home, and that's when they contacted us about property there. So it came few years later, huh?

DG: So was your husband enthused about this idea, also?

RI: Well, I think he's always enthused about lot of projects that he'd like to do. But I always said that, criticized him in that he gets enthused about projects, but he himself doesn't do a lot of the work. He expects other people to do it. But I better quit on that, because I don't want to blame him for everything. But then, at least what I would say is that when we were ready to give our office building to Nikkei Concerns, he didn't put up much object, objection to that. So because he okayed my giving the building to Nikkei Concerns I'll be grateful to him. Maybe at first it was called a charitable remainder trust we established. And this is before he got ill, so it might've been about three years before he died, and at that that time the trust was set up so that when both of us dies, then the building will go to Nikkei Concerns. But two years ago when he died I said, "I don't want to be responsible for that building," so I wanted to change that trust to actual donation to Nikkei Concerns and since it only involved me it was easier to just give it away. Because as long as he was alive he was interested in getting a little income from that building since we were both retired, so, which was normal. But after he was gone I decided that I don't need the income, I don't need the responsibility to take care of the building. So, I'm just hoping that that building will be used to benefit the community and I hope that Nikkei Concerns would use it for something like a... I was talking to Katherine the other day and she and Lillian Hayashi are thinking that maybe they'd like to establish a center where people could drop in and, and either exercise, maybe a wellness center, or play cards, or have a cup of coffee, or something like that, a drop-in place where our office used to be on the ground level, which is facing Sixteenth Avenue. But the upstairs is rented fully so that it be-, it's still an income property, like Dr. Toda and then the Shiatsu people are there.

<Begin Segment 49>

AI: Well, I wanted to ask a little bit more about your professional name, and whether you had any discussions with your husband about your name because I have always known you as Dr. Ruby Inouye and you had talked a little bit about your name earlier, yesterday, but I wondered if you and your husband had any discussion about your name?

RI: Okay, we probably did. But see, I was already in practice when I met him. And I was already Dr. Inouye. And then, when I got married I told him that I'm not changing my professional name because most of my patients are Japanese and "Inouye" definitely is Japanese whereas "Shu" is Chinese. So, I think there was no objection to that. But I always tried to say that when, when it had nothing to do with medicine that I was Mrs. Shu. So, our household accounts were always under Shu and I called myself Ruby Shu after I retired, so it's not that I'm not proud of Inouye, but I figured as long as I'm Dr. Inouye, maybe people would be more likely to ask me lotta medical questions, so, but, it's okay. When people ask me questions I don't mind nowadays, and especially since my patients were long-time patients, they tell me what their medical problems have been and I, I sympathize with them and I understand what they're saying, so I don't mind. And my patients are my friends, and to this day I have lotta friends, they're, they were my former patients, but... they don't feel scared or, what shall I say? They have no qualms about approaching me, so I hope that I'm very approachable, that I could talk to them, it's okay.

<Begin Segment 50>

AI: Well, you were in practice for a very long time.

RI: I was in practice for forty-six years. And I, like most people retire at sixty-five, but around sixty-five I didn't feel like retiring and my secretary was sixty, so, she wouldn't be retiring. She wouldn't, if she, if I retired she'd have to find a new job. And then there were still a lot of Isseis around and they said, "Well, please don't retire, we don't know what to do," it's mostly this speaking Japanese. And so we worked until seventy, until I was seventy. Then, at seventy I still felt physically well and still interested, and there were still Issei people around, so I said, "Okay, few more years." But by the time I was seventy-five, and my secretary was sixty-five, so she would have been ready to retire, and then there was a lot of computer work going on, and I would have had to change my whole office into a computer-operated office because that was the new way to do things, and I was doing everything the old-fashioned way, regular typewriter and all that, so I knew I would've had to change over, which would have been very costly. And then I decided that mentally I was slowing down, and, a little more forgetful, and that kind of thing, and I thought, "I should quit before I make a big mistake," and to make a big mistake in medicine would be very, very tragic, and I wanted to be ahead of that. So I decided I'd better quit. And I knew that intellectually I wasn't as sharp as I used to be. [Laughs] You know how you are. So, I'm glad I quit at that time, even though lotta people said, "Oh no, you're still okay," but you know, they're just saying that because they wanted me to practice some more. But by then, I wasn't interested in the income and so I didn't necessarily need that kind of work.

So, since retiring, retiring hasn't been real easy for me because I've, I've liked to keep busy and to be doing something every day is my goal, and when I don't have much to do it makes me stressful and -- [laughs] -- and so every day I plan that, oh, I'm gonna do this or that and I do a lot of handwork and sewing and, right now, because of the sukiyaki dinner, I'm making this and that and then I always make things and bring to Keiro.

And oh, the reason why I make those sweatshirts with the tsuru on it, have you seen that? This is, oh, maybe fifteen years ago, I was at a cherry blossom festival and I was sitting to see a demonstration (by) a man who came from Takayama, Japan, and he was in charge of making banners, and I don't know, painting or sewing something on banners that were displayed on top. So I think he was doing tie-dye things, too, so I was sitting in a chair in front, waiting for the next demonstration to start and somebody called me out. So I went to another room and they said, "This man's daughter-in-law is here with him from Japan and she's not feeling good, so would you talk to her?" So I went to a back room and then I found out that her period was late. So of course, she was pregnant. But she said that, they're in another country and they don't know what to do and they... I said, "Well, there's such a thing as a pregnancy test you could buy at a Bartell Drug or somewhere." Well, they didn't know how to do it because of English and all that, so I said, "Okay, I'll take care of it." So, the mother-in-law came with me in my car and we went to pick this girl up at the hotel, Four Seasons, I think, and went to my office, and I had a pregnancy test and I got her urine, and tested it and it was positive. So as soon as we told her she was pregnant, then her nausea and vomiting, okay, she could live with it. So then, when I went back to this place to sit and watch his demonstration, he gave me a handkerchief that was hand-dyed and it said "Dr. Ruby" on the bottom and there was this tsuru on it. He had somehow made it for me, as a thank-you gift. So that was the pattern I got, and I made copies of it and then I've been making that tsuru ever since. And people ask me, "Where did you get that pattern?" Well, I say, oh, it's a long story -- [laughs] -- but something like that, one of my patients. Then the following year, I think they came back again and this time she brought this baby with her and wanted me to be sure to see him.

AI: That's a wonderful story.

RI: Yeah, there's always some story like that. But, it's interesting.

<Begin Segment 51>

AI: Well, over the many years that you practiced, you must have seen quite a few of the new improvements in medical technology and changes in the way that different --

RI: Oh, definitely, yes. Well, even, even heart surgery is, boy, it's not new anymore, is it? But you know, when it first started it was like, oh, if you're over seventy, you wouldn't ever think about heart surgery. But nowadays, even on eighty-year-olds they're doing heart surgery. Oh, lots of new techniques, well, kidney dialysis started, all kinds of things.

AI: Are there any changes, medical, in medicine, advancements in medicine that you think really stood out as making a big impact on people, on your patients?

RI: Well, maybe the acceptance of acupuncture and all this alternative medicine kind of thing and you know, I'm not snubbing my nose at them, either. People who believe in those things, maybe they do derive some benefit, so I'm tolerant. Not that I definitely believe in it, but then, maybe acupuncture actually works, but early on, we thought that was terrible. And you know, the Issei people did this, did yaito, you know, they put something on their skin and put a match to it and burned it. In English it's called something like moxibuction, or something like that. But if they think it helps, it's alright with me. You know, maybe it's in the mind, too. So, I'm not opposed to a lot of things like that. I'm not definitely saying, "My way of medicine is the best way," because things are changing all the time.

<Begin Segment 52>

AI: Well, I also wanted to ask you if you thought that any, if there was anything in your Japanese heritage, or the way that you were brought up that affected the way that you practiced and in some way influenced you in a way that would be different than others.

RI: I don't think it would be just Japanese ways. I think it's just individual. I always believed that being kind to people probably was the best way and having integrity and being thoughtful. Because my patients, they were very kind to me. Like I would get their garden produce, I'd get their peas and sugar peas and tomatoes and beans. They would always come, bring things to me. And they treated me like their family, so they were good to me, so in turn I figured that I should be good to them. And everybody has feelings and you have to be careful to take care of those feelings. And just being thoughtful is the important thing, I think. When, when patients come to my office, they're suffering and they're either sick or they're, they're sad and all that, so, if you're conscious of how they're feeling and take care of that then I think you'll be okay.

I think just being kind is a, I think is a very important character trait for someone. You know, even if I can't cure them. And one time, one man said to me, "Ruby-san, in your practice," he said it sort of like, "you've killed a lot of people." Well, a lot of people have died, but I didn't actually kill them, but, I think he said it something like that in a joking way. And of course I didn't like it. I said, "Gosh, I don't kill them, they died but I tried to take care of them and I can't reverse the death," but, even in death if you're very compassionate and thoughtful, I think that goes a long ways. And I think that a lot of the widows who lost their husbands, I know lot of 'em died at home and I was there when they died, and I think they appreciated that, that kind of thing. You know, it's not that I had the best medical skills, I probably didn't. But as a human being if I tried to be compassionate and thoughtful, I think that goes a long ways. And I don't think that's definitely just a Japanese characteristic, it's just a personal kind of thing that I think is important.

DG: One of the things that comes to mind, your mentioning the incident where you got upset with the gentleman because he used a term that was stronger than you felt.

RI: Uh-huh.

DG: One of the things that comes to mind is that you have a lot of gaman.

RI: I have the gaman?

DG: Right, and you don't get upset when people...

RI: Oh, no. I'm pretty... what should I say? I don't get upset easily.

DG: Right.

RI: I'm pretty stable. So, I don't know if that's gaman, though. Gaman is suffering, but not showing it or doing --

DG: Well, but I think it comes from that.

RI: Oh.

DG: Your ability to...

RI: Well, I'm sure that I inherited that, maybe from my mother. She had to gaman when her stepmother was there, that kind of thing. But I don't know that my mother taught me that kind of thing.

DG: She lived it.

RI: Yeah, probably. Yeah, she lived it because she told me that she got interested in ikebana because she said that when things were bothering her, just doing a flower arrangement really helped her to calm down. So, she said when she was little bit upset, she'd do a flower arrangement. And she became my ikebana teacher. I think she was good at it. She also did shuuji until her hands started to shake so she couldn't hold the brush anymore. See, that's why I say I also had to admire my mother. [Laughs] She probably had gaman. Yeah, you're right.

But, being thoughtful of others. When I got that redress money, the immediate thought was, "Wow, I better reimburse some of the people who helped me." So when I was going to Texas, or maybe when I was going to medical school, I wrote a letter to the American Baptist, maybe it's called the Northern Baptist Convention, anyway, it was a Baptist organization, the head office, and I asked them if they would help me financially, you know, since I'm going to school. And they wrote back to me and said that since they are a church group they're not really giving money out, and in fact, they're collecting money, but that they'd like to help me, so they gave me fifty dollars. And in those days it was a lot. So, when the redress money came, I thought about them, I better give some money to them, so I made a donation to them and told them, "So many years ago you helped me so I'd like to pay you back." So, you know, my redress money went out here and there all over -- [laughs] -- and I didn't have any left, but I tried to make sure to pay people back.

<Begin Segment 53>

AI: Well, before the break you had just started telling a little bit about what you did when you received your redress. And I wanted to ask you more about redress because from what I've heard from some people, and from what I've read, apparently some people thought that maybe the redress movement was not a very good idea in the beginning, that perhaps it was rocking the boat and perhaps might cause -- if Japanese Americans asked for redress from the government -- it might cause a backlash. And I was wondering, if you think back to those early times, I think it was the early '70s and mid-'70s or so, what, do you recall what you first thought about the idea?

RI: Well, probably my impression was that all the evacuation is past history and we have to live with it. And in a way, I also felt that maybe the positive things that came out of it was that the Japanese people were dispersed and spread out and not concentrated on the West Coast. And perhaps that was a benefit in that the rest of the American people in the country got to know the Japanese better, little by little. And so that, to me, was a very good thing. And even personally, for myself, I don't know whether, if it weren't for the evacuation, whether I would have become a doctor. But probably the evacuation pushed me into making sure that I continue my education. So, when redress came around, you know, I wasn't that interested in getting paid for something that happened, it just happened -- not "just happened," but it happened and we have to accept it and live on. But, of course, when the redress actually came, then it came out that it was the Sanseis who were really incensed with how we were treated and so they wanted us to be paid for it. And when I received the money it was extra money. I wasn't going to use it for myself, that, you know, I'd sure like to pay back people who helped me. And I told you the Baptist people were one of 'em. I gave some money to each of my children and their spouses and probably to church and JACL and.... if I had more money I would've given more, or had more people to give it to. I couldn't give it away fast enough. And maybe I wished I had more, but, anyway, the good, good thing is that maybe it impressed on the rest of the American public that the Japanese people suffered a lot and deserved some, some redress. But I don't think money could pay for everything. And whether it's twenty thousand or fifty thousand, it's not the money, but that's all done with, so I think that the knowledge that it disbursed also was good.

AI: How about --

DG: What about your parents, getting theirs?

RI: Well, my father died earlier, so he was not eligible. My mother... let's see, the redress, my mother died in '89 and the redress was after that, huh?

AI: She was eligible. Since...

RI: Yes, I think so. I think she did receive the money. And what happened was that it was divided among the children. We must have got some money from her. But she wasn't living at the time. But I think she lived long enough. But my, of course my father died --

DG: But how did you feel about her getting it?

RI: Well, I said, I thought it was too late. And I thought my father deserved it, you know, when he, he lost his business and he lost his, all his funds, and he, then his coming back and worrying about how to support the family. I think they're the ones who really deserved it, but most of the ones who deserved it were gone. So, that's just personal. I don't know what the percentage of people who died before the redress was, but... it was very late.

AI: Well, in addition to the check that, of redress, there was also an apology signed by the President, a letter of apology. And I was wondering what your reaction was when you saw that letter.

RI: Well, I, I read the apology, but I wasn't impressed just because it was from the President. I just said, "Well, too late." But I wasn't that impressed. But it probably was, according to the public, it was probably a great big deal, huh? To have a president apologize to a group of people. It should've been by the person who first decreed it. [Laughs] But, anyway...

<Begin Segment 54>

AI: Well, the redress movement was something that was partially influenced by other changes, like the Civil Rights movement and the rights of the African Americans, and of course, along with that, in the same decades was the women's movement. So you have seen many changes in society that have come about. And I was wondering if there is anything that kind of stood out in your mind or any thought or reflection you have about these major changes and the impact it's made on people?

RI: Well, I think most of the changes are for the good, that gradually society is beginning to accept that, you know, race diversity is fine and Japanese, or black, or any other race is just as good as white. And whatever occurs, even for women, gradually, I consider it progress. So we are getting more tolerant of others, other races, other sex, other people, so I think it's for the good. Maybe if I lived another fifty years I would see more progress. But, I'm not really, really dissatisfied with society now.

AI: Well, some people have said that they felt there was a, we had a setback with September 11, 2001, when there were the terrorist attacks in the United States, and in fact some people said that it reminded them of December 7, 1941. And I was wondering if that had occurred to you?

RI: Well, I think, I think that the terrorist attack is... well, since, since the terrorist attack happened in New York, and we are on the West Coast, it didn't affect me as much. And then I didn't have any personal friends who were involved in there, so probably my feelings aren't as strong as people who live on the East Coast. But then, I think it's entirely different. At the time of Pearl Harbor there was war going on already and since we are Japanese, then Pearl Harbor attack really affected us more, whereas the terrorist attack hasn't aff-, hasn't given me much opinion about how to feel. It's something that I'm not very involved in or not very knowledgeable about so I can't comment too much about that.

AI: There had, there had been some people who were of Middle Eastern heritage and background who were the victims of some hate crimes after that. And that was a difficult period.

RI: Oh, about how the Japanese were treated, the prejudice about it?

AI: Some similarities.

RI: Yes, it's probably similar but I don't know whether I could even say that. It probably wasn't as bad as how we were treated. At least they were not evacuated. But they probably sensed it, and because of our experience, what we experienced with our evacuation, maybe they didn't get it as bad as we did. So, it had to be more improved than our treatment. And then, they had more supportive groups to help them not repeat the same thing. So, our going through with it I hope helped them. And I can't help but feel that, you know, they're still with their families, they're -- well, most of 'em are with their families. They have their, most of 'em have their businesses and they weren't sent away, so, not as bad, but they probably felt, felt similar kinds of feelings.

<Begin Segment 55>

AI: Well, along with all these changes, in your own family, you've had changes. You have a new generation now, your grandchildren, and I was wondering if you would just say a little bit about what types of hopes or, hopes that you might have for your grandchildren and for the other future generations?

RI: Yeah, of course, my grandchildren are, what should I say? They're, ainoko is mixed generation, so they're... well, my gosh, they're one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Japanese, and half-Caucasian. I mean, both sets of grandchildren. Well, one of 'em is a nine-year-old boy, and then the other, other family, there's a five-year-old girl, and a three-year-old boy. Well, I hope that, for them, that they'll just grow up to be good people, good citizens. Not necessarily be a president of something but, you know, have good values for themselves. And then, what I'm glad about my children is, well, I'm not too sure about my son, but my daughters, they're very thoughtful of other people, and you know, they're grateful for what services they receive and they're sure to thank them or reciprocate with gifts or whatever, a little bit Japanesey, where you're always bearing gifts. But I'm glad. It's better than not thinking like that. And, of course, maybe girls are different from boys. I don't know if my son is like that.

But when my son went to Stanford, I remember that the first year he was there I sent him matsutake, and I don't know what he was going to do with it but he immediately said he got on the bicycle and went to some professor's home and brought it to them because they were Japanese, and they were from Seattle. So, I said, well, good. He was thoughtful, anyway. And then, I'm making all these rice sack aprons and one year he said he wanted couple of 'em because he was going to a Stanford family who had invited him for dinner and he wanted to bring an apron to the host and hostess, you know, one for the wife and one for the husband. So I thought, well, good. I want them to be sure to be thoughtful, not just take things for granted.

And then my daughter, who's living in New York with a eight-year-old son, oh he's nine now. She says she wants him to learn that he should also be sharing things and think about other people. So he's having trouble with his eye, vision, so one, one of his eyes is almost blind. But I got a letter from him saying that, "I'm going to be nine years old on February 18th but I don't want you want to give me any presents. My mother said that I will receive one birthday gift from them but that I would like you to donate any money you spend on my birthday gift and give it to this organization for seeing-eye dogs, because they would help a blind person." And she said that they sent about fifty letters like that to their friends and to all my relatives. I said, "Oh, gosh, I don't want you to tell my relatives to give him a gift." But they were glad to do it and my daughter said, "Well, even if it's five dollars it's good because it's this kid saying, 'Sure, I don't want any birthday present, please donate it to this organization.'" So I'm glad that at least my children are teaching their children how to share things and be thoughtful of other people. I was proud of him. I wish I brought that letter, it was so cute. [Laughs]

AI: It's wonderful to hear about those values being passed on.

RI: Yes. You know, not always give me, give me, give me. They get too many things, anyway.

AI: Well, is there anything else that we haven't said that you would like to say?

RI: Well, I think I talked so much that right now my mind is sort of blank. I'll probably think of lot of things that I wish I had said, but it's all right.

AI: We really appreciate your time and participating in the interview. Thanks very much.

RI: I'm very glad to do this.