<Begin Segment 14>

AI: Okay, so just before the break, you were telling about Anna and how she had adapted to losing her leg, but, but tell me how did she lose her leg in the first place?

EH: Well, some friends, the Inais, who were living on the lower flat, were going to what we called "snow line" in those days, for playing in the snow, and they took Anna and Jean with them, because the kids -- as kids we were, they very close in age. I was beyond them, but -- Martha -- and I were beyond them, but Naomi, who was a year younger than Martha and, and down to... Sara, I think, didn't go on that trip, but their youngest son was maybe the same age as -- no, no. Their, their... one of their sons was the same age as Anna. But anyway, up at the snow line they had parked the cars and were about to trek out into the snowfields when a young seventeen- or eighteen-year-old came zooming down the steep hill, steep road, had lost control of the car, and he hit one side of the snow bank and would hit the other, other side. And at, at one point when he hit one side of the snow bank, he bounced over and hit a open door where the Inais were getting out of the car, and that made that driver bounce back into between two parked cars that were Inais' relatives, Mrs. Inai's brother had his car. And the two girls were standing between these two cars, and the bumper of this ragtag car caught three legs and threw them fifty feet or something. And Susie had her nerve, main nerve behind her knees torn. And I think, I think that's maybe her major injury. Anna also... I think Anna had just one leg caught in the bumper and... but lost a bone chip. And in those days, this was, let's see. She was born in '31, so it must have been '37 or so. In those days they couldn't graft bones, though my parents did go back up the next day and really scoured the area to look for that chipped bone. I guess you could probably patch, but there was no using a bone tissue from somewhere else. So anyway, she... the leg had also become infected and... in the long process, and so they had to amputate. And one of... a moment of... a trying moment was Anna kept saying to my mother, "But it's going to grow back, isn't it? You know, it's going to grow back." So that was hard.

My mother kept, had to keep to her insurance work, so I sometimes would go sit in the hospital with her. And there wasn't much I could do. Lights were dimmed early, and... though once I was fanning her, because she was perspiring, and then the nurse caught me and reprimanded me, but I didn't know you were not supposed to fan somebody who was perspiring. She might have had a fever, but... and, and it took a long time to recover. Poor Susie was in such dire pain. You could hear her screaming all over the hospital. And Susie was an exceptionally shy girl. She was, she was the same age as Jean, so she... Jean was three years older than Anna. But Susie really had to... lost her shyness, because she really had to demand and, and get her, needed attention.

But when Anna came back out of, came out of the hospital, the Sacramento school system was ready to assign a home school teacher, and Anna would not have this. She wanted to go to school. So we, they finally let, had to let her go, and she, she went with a peg leg for probably a year. And, and in those days, because they didn't have the ability to adjust prostheses with the growth of the leg, it meant that new legs had to built or... and so that went on periodically. But they were very heavy, and so when the straps broke, it really was a trial and tribulation. And that's when Anna told me maybe twenty years ago how, how difficult and how angry she got. Because also, the teachers were not sensitive. I don't know that you have to be trained to be sensitive, but you, you'd certainly think that... if they had provided a chair for her I would have felt better, but she managed to continue to take violin lessons, and this is where I'm saying George Nishikawa, who's the same age, carried all her things somehow or the other. My younger sisters... there were four Inai children and two Nishikawas, and then three Ishikawas, I guess. So Sarah, I... no, Sarah wouldn't have gone to school yet. She was in first grade. But she managed to survive, but when she got into camp, again, there was this trial and tribulation where she did-, she didn't want to face the whole new classroom. But once she got there she, she just, there was no stopping her.

And when she went to the... when they, when my mother drove out from -- well, to get back to Sacramento, growing up in, in your own ethnic congregation probably makes it easier. I do have one of the last Sacramento Presbyterian church (pictures) in, in the, in front of the old building. Sacramento being a state capital, they wanted the major entrance... they wanted to buy up the major entrance to the city, which was over what they call I Street Bridge, I think. Anyway, the Japanese Presbyterian church was on this main entrance, so eventually the city bought it, and the congregation chose a lot facing Southside Park, which, which was a major, good-sized park in the south part of Sacramento. And so the park, the church now is a very picturesque, white, simple church. And the congregation is going strong. One of the last occurrences before the war, or at the time, when, when Pearl Harbor... well, before Pearl Harbor occurred, they had built this church and they had a dedication and that was a big event, but the church had quite a intimate congregation. We knew everybody, and so I still get the Parkview... it's a, it's a monthly newsletter now, and it, it's... I must commend them for keeping going. And it's growing a little. And they are now... in, in about 2004 I'm beginning to see that they are -- maybe it started late 2003 -- beginning to include other ethnic groups. I think I see some Chicano names, and I think I see -- I don't know whether it's, I can't remember whether it's Cambodian or Laotian -- being invited. I think they probably used the church for their own services at first, and then eventually they, they merged.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.