<Begin Segment 21>

AI: But... so to go back to that day of, of Pearl Harbor, then very soon your mother was getting rid of these things and... but, and then the day after was Monday. Did you go right back to work to the family, to the --

EH: (Yes). (Yes), and it was, it was deadly. But the family I lived with understood. "That wasn't you," they said. And on top of that, there were 5,000 guys, Niseis, in the armed forces already. That was more of a problem. I had friends who had brothers in the army, and they were so worried about the treatment that their brothers might be getting. Their... some of my friends did have a quandary about, "Gee, if we had to fight, which side would we fight on?" And I... there was no worry. That was no, no question for me, but I think sometimes I guess it depends on your family. I, I did experience when, when that freshman year in, in junior college, Jewish kids were coming in from Europe, and see, they had, they had long been tolerating or, or surviving the Hitler invasion, and they would invite me to, for instance, a student YM/YW. It was impressive that they got involved with social issues almost as soon as they came in. And one of the things that they were doing, we still had... what, what did they call? Hoovervilles along the rivers. And they were going to, to help people like that.

AI: For people who don't know what Hooverville was, could you describe a little bit about what that looked like?

EH: It was the height of the Depression when so many people lost homes and income that the only place they could set up any kind of living... very limited, sparse living quarters. In Sacramento it was along the river for many, maybe many reasons. There was, at least water available, and it was warm enough that... in, in Seattle, Hooverville was along the, south of Jackson or that area became a massive Hooverville.

AI: And so you were saying that then the Jewish young people, as soon as they arrived in that area, would start getting involved to provide assistance to people.

EH: (Yes), (yes). And they were... and they knew from their own experience that people who needed help should be helped. And now I wish I had gone once with them. I did have a close friend, Lucy Hahn, who was an American Jew, and she used to tell me about her relatives and what, what they were coping with.

But in the... the other thing that happened when I was a senior -- in fact, I guess for physical ed, I took modern dance almost all three years. And as a senior dance concert, the dance instructor had us pantomiming or dancing through scenes of that era of... I remember being, playing the role of a journalist taking notes from a report. But there was... on the other side of the stage was Hitler's marching troops. And I can't remember... a couple of other scenes. So we "dance drama" this in the senior year.

I, I remember that graduation year was a little scary, because I... "Gee, here we are out of high school. What are, what are we going to do?" I knew I was going to junior college, but it was really a time to start looking for a vocation, hopeful. Though by the time I was in junior college, my mother was trying to convince me to help her with the insurance business, and I kept telling her that I wanted to be a social worker. And she was saying, "Well, this business is social work. You could do this and that." And, and she was, she was good at it. She would buy quantities of baby shoes and carry them in her trunk, so that when she got to a place where there was a new baby, she was able to, I mean, baby shoes, in the, in the '30s and '40s cost a dollar, probably. But in the country in the farmlands when they... you had a lot of splinters and you had gravel paths, it's a wonder babies didn't get injured more severely running barefoot. They couldn't wear zoris but...

So she did... she even at one point carried some kind of contraceptives, and we were not sophisticated enough to, to get into that. That was kind of a taboo subject, but she even helped young Nisei salesmen. She would carry their brands of fertilizer in her trunk, and she would sell that idea or give samples and, and convince farmers or farmers' wives, farmers' widows, particularly, to try fertilizers. And they could probably barely afford it, but it was hard for Niseis to, to get a niche or be entrepreneurial, and if this was something she could do, she did it. She, she learned how to read blood pressure early in the game, because that's one of the criterias for... you have to pass a physical to get in insurance. And she would carry this blood pressure kit with her, and she would take, if they said, yes, then that's the first thing she did is take the blood pressure, and if it was too high then she would tell them, but...

AI: So, so in her business, driving around these rural areas to these Issei families, she would do a social service.

EH: Yes. And that's what she was convincing me, that... I remember once she came all the way back home, and I, when I came home from school she was on the telephone calling a friend to say, "What do you do with Masashi's old pants?" Or Tsuyoshi's old pants. And I was saying, "What are you doing?" And she, she would be gathering old clothes from her fujinkai friends, because she ran into widows with children who refused to go to school because they didn't have any decent clothes to wear. And so she would gather all these, and she'd drive fifty miles back and, and give it to the kids. And the other thing she did was take them to barbershops, pay a quarter, and let them have a... get 'em a good haircut.

And women really appreciated my mother, because she could... I mean, she was proving something, that women could do this. And so there were families who would wait for my mother to buy a policy from and not let all these other men, who -- it was a very competitive business. I think there were five Japanese men who were in the insurance business in Sacramento. And she... my mother would chuckle, and she would get the biggest charge out of it. People would park in their barns, sleep in their barns, to go fishing while they were farming and be able to bring something for dinner. But while they were fishing, my mother would have driven in and sold them a policy and, and be gone [cell phone beeps] -- my thing is getting low -- And, and, the wives, and the farmers' wives would delight in saying, "Mrs. Ishikawa was here. We bought a policy from her." And they might have been there for two or three days, spending all that time trying to win their battle. They're pressure salesmen. So people, I think on the other hand, may be empathizing or sympathizing with her, but, but the fact that (she) was able to, to accomplish this, she became quite well-known in that, in the Sacramento valley.

And, and at first she hired a housekeeper for us, when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen. Maybe, no, maybe even before that. We, we had a friend who did the housekeeping for us for a couple of years, and then we hired... and then she hired someone who was just out of high school for a year or two. And then she hired an older Issei woman, and that went on for a year or so, and I was in high school. And, and one day I, I came home and said, "You know, Obasan, you don't have to stay, we could do this." And that was so bold and insulting or ingratitude showing, you know, ingratitude, that she did up and leave and went home. When my mother came home at eleven or midnight or something and, and she said, "Where's So-and-so?" And I said, "Well, she went home." And my mother knew something was wrong, that she wouldn't have gone home without my mother saying she could. So she (backed) out of the garage and -- no, no. I think she, because she took her home. But she whizzed over to Obasan's house and, and said, "How come?" And she said, "Because your daughter told me she didn't need me." And that wasn't, that wasn't my tone, but I... you know, you like to run your own home rather than have a stranger running it, though I probably should have maybe shown more respect. But I had, we were just proving that -- and Martha and I really ran, learned to run the house from the time... well, we were in high school, probably, freshmen, sophomore. And fifteen? (Yes). Thirteen, fourteen. But we systematized things. I did all the laundry and we split the ironing and I did the evening meals. She did the dishes and she cleaned the house, while I did the washing and this -- and I, I have, I took public speaking as an elective English my senior year, and I said in one of my public speaking, speaking assignments that American kids could do a lot more if, if we would. I said, "In, in the Japanese community," I said, "we, the kids that have grocery stores race home and help run the grocery store, and give their parents some relief. If we come from a family with hotels, we have to clean the rooms and change the sheets and, and be ready for the next day." And I'm not sure it was the most popular thing to say. I, I once talked, talked about the Japanese language school and what it was like and demonstrated some kanji on the blackboard and, and that kind of thing. So you become culturally aware by the time you're a senior in high school and could interpret this. (Yes).

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.