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AI: Well, let me also ask you, taking you back to when you were leaving Tule Lake in June, at that point, you had already -- had you already been accepted to college at Milwaukee-Downer? Or how...

EH: You know, I had applied and... I guess I had been accepted. I don't know. I, in Petoskey, my mother wrote a letter saying that she deposited, I think the tuition was a thousand dollars. And she, she sent a thousand dollar check to Milwaukee. That was a big sigh of relief for me, 'cause I hadn't, I'd been gone since June, and I guess I had to assume that that was going to happen. But when she, when she wrote me and said she did that, that was a big sigh of relief.

AI: That, that's a tremendous amount of money at the time.

EH: Well, this was a good private women's college. And what happened was, we were all, I think, about eight of us were there. We had all been told that we could not go to a college where there was an ROTC. And so I was still in camp -- and fortunately, the agency that the Quakers set up called... Student Relocation Office Service, was going, and it was funny because we had a lot of friends who were in big state universities all who had, all had ROTCs, but -- and my sister and I both got that kind of letter. And so we both applied at women's colleges. Even in this college, there was a Hawaiian girl, Chizuko Nishimura, I think, was her name. She was an optometry student at University of Chicago. And she had to transfer out of Chicago to come to Milwaukee-Downer. Marjorie Horagami was my roommate, and she was from, she was a Portlander and was a sophomore at Oregon State. There was a Rose Sakemi who later became Mrs. Harvey Itano, who was the person I, his father was an insurance agent and I had asked him, "What did your father do about your (clients)?" And that, that was ironic. I think, she never told me she was going steady with, with Harvey, but knowing that, I came from Sacramento, she, she used to say, "Gee, didn't you have some bull sessions with Harvey, and didn't you have some good meetings?" And I said, "You know, Harvey was three or four years older, and he had a brother a year older than I was. But I, I knew Harvey well enough to, to say, "Hi," and ask about school, but we never had anything more in common. And, and then years later, I find out that she's now Harvey, Mrs. Harvey Itano. But there were, there was a... somebody Iida, who was also from Seattle. She ended up teaching at Eckstein Middle School where my kids were.

But anyway, we all got these letters saying we had to, we could not go to a school where there was an ROTC. And I haven't really heard about anybody else -- I haven't always inquired, but it was really curious 'cause I, we certainly had a lot of friends who were in big state universities.

AI: And where was Milwaukee-Downer located?

EH: On the east side of Milwaukee, and a fairly posh, big, huge brick homes, mansions, kind of. And it was, it was a situation where I never would have applied for, expected, but it was almost like a finishing school. There were lights out at ten o'clock, it just killed me, because being the oldest of five kids, I always had to bathe the younger ones, get 'em to bed, get the house quiet before I could start studying. Sometimes ten o'clock. And here, to have to cope with lights-out, it was just, I, I certainly learned to put my hair, pin curls were the way you curled your hair these days, those days. And I, I certainly learned to curl my hair in the dark. We used flashlights under, under covers to finish studying. Once in a while we'd get caught, 'cause somebody, the senior -- I forgot what they were called, but they, they could detect a flashlight even if it was under cover, and come knocking. But it was, it was a very good school. Small classes and all the faculty had Ph.Ds all over the place. I...

AI: How were you, how were you received there? Did you face any, any prejudice or...

EH: You know, friendly enough, there was a gal from Brazil, probably, I think her, she was probably American and her parents were stationed in Brazil, she kind of gave us a rough time. Not, not all that malicious, but laughing at our sizes and, "What are you doing here?" kind of thing. There was a, there was a Judy Johnson whose father worked in the relocation office. So she knew a little bit about relocation and approached me about it. And, and I described conditions and where I was from and all. But Marge Horagami, who's my roommate, really didn't want me talking about evacuation. And, and it's the same kind of psychology about being embarrassed and, and not wanting people to know that kind of thing. And I, and I had to say to Judy, I mean to Marjorie, "Listen, Judy approached me and asked me if I, what camp I was from. And I said, "She knew the situation because her father works at the relocation office." And that, that was one of my first encounters of, of a Nisei not wanting to discuss -- in fact, Marjorie's problem was she happened to be born in Japan when her parents were on a trip. And so she didn't have an American citizenship, and she was very, not only envious, but angry at that situation. That she couldn't have all the privileges of American citizenship. She did have a father who was in, in a Texas federal prison for what they termed "dangerous aliens" or whatever. And she was constantly having to send some kind of medicine, kind of a laxative kind of medicine. There's a common name for it, and I can't remember. But she was an only daughter, and that was... I think her mother must have been in camp. But, and she knew a couple of the friends that I had met in Pocatello, because they were in Minidoka, too.

But coming out of camp into the dorm -- because there were other Niseis there, for one thing, several of us had sisters in... two of us had sisters in other women's colleges. The smaller colleges -- the Quaker colleges, for instance, didn't have that kind of problem, because they wouldn't have an ROTC. And we certainly were scattered through all, a lot of colleges.

AI: So you were at Milwaukee-Downer then, from the fall of 1943 into --

EH: (Yes), I just stayed there one year. I just decided I had to earn some money, and I, I wasn't (going to) ask my mother for another year's tuition. And it was, room and board, you didn't have a choice -- well, I did, I did work for my room and board at one time. But a lot of tradition, we had to wear class jackets, meaning different color blazers for special days. But, but as far as education goes, I, I think I got a good dose of it.

<End Segment 45> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.