<Begin Segment 43>

AI: So, so your first job outside of camp was to work for the Redfields and assist with their, their daughter's wedding?

EH: Wedding, (yes). And then when the wedding was over, they asked me if I'd be willing to go with them, the parents, to Petoskey, Michigan, and I said, "Sure, I'll go. I just have to be back at Milwaukee-Downer by the time school starts. And so, I, I think I even got on a... sleeper? I remember having meals on that train. And, and it was a first-time experience for me. I was experiencing people coming from as far as Louisiana going up to Petoskey, Michigan, for the summer, and that kind of thing. Now -- and that was a, a good experience. Every Sunday morning, Robert (E. Park) would lead a, kind of a sharing, reading -- it wasn't a service, but it was kind of an open-air discussion, philosophical, on a Sunday morning, every Sunday morning. And that was a new experience. Church was, conventional church was what I was brought up on. But to have the ability to share whatever, whether it was a news article or a major magazine article, or, or something historic. Everybody had something to -- and I learned a lot. There were terms and world history kinds of issues that I never even heard of, heard about.

The other, the other thing that happened to me in Petoskey... and I didn't know that there was any other Nisei there, but one afternoon, seventeen-year-old Nisei girl, maybe eighteen, came knocking on my door in tears. And I was so surprised to see her. Somebody must have told her that I was also in Petoskey. But this gal was, had taken a job as a housekeeper for a single male, a bachelor guy. And, and she was doing it, and I don't know (how) long or when she got there, but he would apparently have too much to drink, and threaten her or attack her (in) some way, somehow. And she came -- somehow, I don't know where... she wasn't that close in distance-wise, but when she, I let her in, and she was telling me what her problems was, so I (told) Mrs., Mrs. (Park) what was happening. She said, "I'm (going to) call a cab. Both of you get on that cab, get, make the cab wait, and let her get as much of her things as she can. And then tell the -- and I'll, here's some money, I want, I want you to get, or have her get a ticket back to Chicago." And that's what happened. And I, I never -- you know, to this day I don't remember her name, and I don't think I would have remembered the name much after that.

But I saw her off on the train to Chicago, and then when it turned out that my mother... let's see. I think I was, I had come back from Milwaukee and I was living with, with a family in Chicago, on Newport Avenue, at first some friends ran a cleaners about half a block away from my mother. And then by that time, I guess I was doing office work in, at the Board of Trade Building, and one day I, I went to this cleaners for something, and this girl, this, was seventeen, eighteen-year-old girl that I met in Petoskey, had bought the cleaners. And she was running it all by herself. I mean, she, obviously was that kind of independent soul, that she was brave enough to go anywhere and take on anything. That's the last I saw of her. And she, she was a little bit resistant to getting into conversation, so I just felt that she wasn't ready for me to recollect what, what went on Petoskey and ask her about it. But I, I thought, after that I thought that was, whoever that was that gave her the job, and knew that the guy was single, had no business sending a teenager to be a housekeeper for any, anyplace as isolated as that.

That was a -- in Petoskey was, I went to a dentist out of necessity, and he asked me how people were treating me. And I said, "Now, I really haven't had any problems," and he was good enough to say, "That's because you're you." That is, "Your reactions will make a difference as to how somebody's going to react to you." And that taught me a lesson, that hereafter, be open. And, but I thought, in those times, it was good for people to say things like that to younger people who were single. I was in safe, safe haven, but this, this other girl may, may have shied away from... college was another experience, because from there, I went to Milwaukee and got into college, and I found myself -- there were about eight Nisei women, girls there.

<End Segment 43> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.