<Begin Segment 46>

AI: Let's see, and then, at some point you were --

MK: Oh, to meeting my husband.

AI: Yes, uh-huh.

MK: Oh yes. We had dances, and I think -- no. On my first Christmas, we only got three (weeks) of vacation a year. And that, my first vacation was to Chicago, 'cause I looked up my father's bookkeeper (Mina Kimura), who was my mentor, my American, Japanese American mentor. And there, Yoshiko Tsuru, my classmate, said, "Well, let's go to a church, they're having a New Year's Dance," I think it was a New Year's Dance, Christmas dance group. So we crashed in a New Year's Dance. And I was literally a wallflower because I... going through Japanese school I didn't learn how to dance and I wasn't in camp long enough to learn it. And then, Jim was with a bunch of Hawaii boys and they packed themselves in a car and (came) from the University of Michigan they had driven down to Chicago. And they were on their Christmas vacation. So they crashed this party. And that's how -- and he's kinda quiet. So he came up and talked to me. And he, he tried to convince me to come out on the floor and dance and from... later on I found out that Jim was good because he was a welterweight boxer. So he's very light-footed. And my friends who danced with him said, "Oh, he's really good at dancing." And I found out that that's because of his boxing. And of course he was boxing without his parents' knowledge because... so that's how I met. (...) I wasn't that impressed at the beginning, but anyway, he started writing a letter to me and, with my name, St. Mary's. That was all you needed. And the letter found me at the nurse's dorm. And reading the letter, it impressed me that he was intelligent. And so, I thought, "Well, I'll write back to him." And it came, the answer came right away. So we exchanged letter for -- so we exchanged letters for four years. He was broke, too, after using his GI Bill. So, he took his first job in Okinawa. And so this is why we, neither of us were in a position to get married. And he did encourage me to finish nursing school, so there was no question there.

AI: And you did. You did graduate from the nursing school.

MK: Right.

AI: And that was 1951, was it?

MK: '51, uh-huh. So I went back for my fiftieth reunion.

[Interruption]

AI: Well, so to continue when we just took our short break, we were just talking about how you married Jim, and please, what is Jim's full name?

MK: Oh, James Akira Kanemoto.

AI: And did you say that he came from Hawaii?

MK: Right, in Kauai, Hawaii, uh-huh. And his parents moved into Honolulu after the war. But he continued on to... let's see, he had his first two years in University of Hawaii, but with the GI Bill he went to University of Michigan with a few other boys.

AI: So had he been with the 442nd?

MK: No, he wasn't. He was on the invasion of Okinawa, but he was not MIS or 442nd.

AI: Oh, so he was in Okinawa?

MK: Yeah, apparently he, his Japanese was proficient enough that, in the desperate need for the people, the Hawaii people managed to grow up with the language, so he didn't have to go to school and he was shipped out as soon as he was, he went into the army.

AI: Well, and then he, did he know very much about the whole camp experience when he met you?

MK: Not much, not much. But he has been very supportive, has, of course, with my involvement, but he's been very supportive of it, and he knows, I'm sure, quite a bit now because he's the one who has taken me to these, seven of the ten camps. We visited them and he's, he certainly is empathetic, has empathy for all of us, our experience.

<End Segment 46> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.