<Begin Segment 17>

AI: [Laughs] Well, let me take you back to your own high school years.

EH: I think when, when Pearl Harbor occurred --

AI: Oh, excuse me. I don't want to leap to that yet.

EH: Okay.

AI: Because I did have a couple more questions, and one of them is as you were preparing to finish high school and graduate high school and seeing as you did have a boyfriend at the time, did you consider marrying?

EH: No.

AI: I mean, many girls your age in that era, as soon as you were done with high school, you would...

EH: That's right. And he wanted to get married, but I said, "No. I want to go to college." And that was probably our major bone of contention. I think the biggest faux pas was my not... I, we had some kind of tiff, and I didn't invite him to senior ball and that was really my... the big faux pas, 'cause three years and, and then not go. But he, he really was a good person. He was even willing to become a yoshi, meaning ex-, because we were five girls, he had two or three brothers, one of them was in my class. And he went that far. And I had never heard of the term. And it was significant, but I never shared it with my mother, because I didn't want her to get all one way or another about it.

I think being... I saw problems with, his mother was a very strong person and so was my mother, and I just foresaw problems. And my mother, any young man came along, my mother was going to boss him come hell or what. I mean, whether it was proper or not, she was always ordering people around. And that happened even after college and after relocation. She was still bossing people around. But in church, she was also that way. In fujinkai I, I used to tell her, "Don't argue. Don't insist on being right all the time." But she was... she also became, I think she told me she was the first (female) elder in the Presbytery. And I didn't really understand what the Presbytery was, but females, like the Senate, you... it's, it's not really expected to have a female. And I, I think I could believe her being the first. 'Course she, she could communicate in English by the time I was in high school.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.