<Begin Segment 26>

AI: Well, excuse me. Before we jump ahead to that, so you were saying that at the auditorium in Sacramento, there were many, many families there.

EH: Uh-huh.

AI: All... and you were all carrying your luggage.

EH: Luggage, uh-huh. And the army buses would come up the curb, and we all had, family numbers were a very significant item. The head of the family had to go, I think, to the aud-, the same auditorium weeks ahead of time, and you had to register everybody, name and age, and get a family number. And everything... all the luggage we had had to have our numbers on there.

AI: Did -- were you considered the head of the family or your mother?

EH: No, my mother was head of the family. And it... it's really significant, because I really didn't know a lot about property or that kind of thing. We didn't, we didn't have real property. The business was kind of intangible assets, but I... one of the worries I've always had through all these decades is, gee, all those insurance policies that my mother sold and my father sold, I said, "They, those should have been claimable."

And I had one inquiry when I went to a Tule Lake reunion and she saw my nametag, and she said, "You're Mrs. Ishikawa's daughter. Your mother was an insurance agent." And, "(Yes)." And she said, "It was always so good to have her visit." 'Cause they lived in an area called Folsom, and I'd never known my mother went to Folsom. A lot of people all around that Bay Area -- not Bay Area, the Sacramento valley -- knew my mother for various reasons, but that, that gal was so right.

And later on I... Harvey Itano, who is a well-known Nisei doctor who was top of the class at Berkeley when he, when he graduated, his, his father was also an insurance agent and they belonged to the same Presbyterian church. So when I met Harvey at a reunion, I said, "Harvey, what, what do you know about the insurance claims? Did your father do anything about them?" And he... and, of course, this was probably... I don't think it was 2000. Maybe it (was) 1998. Fairly late when I got around to, got around to asking him. But maybe there were a couple of reunions that Ralph didn't go to. Usually he came, and I'm just realizing I don't think Ralph was at that reunion, but it, it was... it must have been before he died. And Harvey's response to me was, "Well, the, the limitation of time has expired," or some... that may be true, but I think this could have been such a huge claim issue that I think the insurance agents -- and there were thousands of insurance agents -- I think that's a major item that me included should have harped about, because otherwise the insurance companies have, have collected a big chunk of money that they're sitting on, and I think the evacuees are entitled to whatever portion, if not the whole... it was interesting. My mother, on one of the return trips to Sacramento -- and I think maybe it was when my father died, and it was... we came back for the funeral -- she borrowed somebody's car, and she went visiting her insurance claimants. And she even went to San Francisco to the head office for Northern California and picked up claim forms, and even picked up a check or two, because she knew of a couple of servicemen who died in service. And I, I went with her on that trip. There was a family in Susanville or Vacaville, somewhere around there, and my mother presented the check. And they were so astounded, because the government had paid them for the death benefit of the son that died, and their... their reaction was "Maa... ita daite mo ii no?" Almost unbelievable. "Are you sure this is all right to accept?" So I know that it was, there were claims available, but...

AI: But at the time, there was very little time to get things in order and...

EH: (Yes). But even after the war, even forty, fifty years after the war I feel like we should have done something. Of course, a good number of the Isseis would have been gone by then, but it's, it's a major item that somebody should... somebody's going to maybe write about at least. The insurance industry ought to put it in their history, if not the evacuation history. And it, it... it's interesting, significant that nobody ever mentions this. But I worry about it a lot, because I don't... I visualize all those farmers who, who lost everything, and they could have used something. Hopefully... I think my mother automatically put people in, in the category called "Paid Up Life" or something like that. You pay up for a certain amount, and then you don't have to pay any more premiums, because the meager amount that you're insured for stays and is held until death. You can't claim it until death. But one of the fortunate things with my parents was the fact that when my father was an insurance agent, he took a health policy out on himself long before he got ill, and so when he got tubercular, we got a fifty-dollar check every month. And that was kind of a godsend, because fifty dollars was probably five times what it's worth. Today it would be two or three hundred dollars at least.

AI: Well --

EH: But that was a good, good... he was a good model for health insurance people.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.