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AI: Oh, excuse me. I, I think I... actually I didn't ask you to say much about the Nihonjinkai, if you could say a little bit about that first.

EH: Well, that, the, the immunization program, the sewing classes, and then the other things that he did was probably act as interpreter or accompany people to doctors or to the bank, things like that, when they needed help. And they came from miles around. It wasn't just Chico.

AI: And for people who don't really know what Nihonjinkai was, could you say a little bit about that?

EH: Nihonjinkais, I think, all up and down the coast probably were basically the social agency, the multi-service agency for the Issei population. They, they probably weren't all exactly the same, but the kinds of problems that occurred are universal: health problems, merchandising or farm produce selling and that kind of thing. I'm sure sometimes there were legal problems about land or even house rentals and that kind of thing. But because my father was more fluent in English, it was probably a lot, little bit easier for him to deal with officious people. I, I think that discrimination probably still went on when it came to land or restrictive covenants. Because it, it wasn't until maybe ten or twenty years ago that I realized, wow, that little block in Chico must have been recognized as the Asian "ghetto" or whatever. It wasn't that much of a ghetto. We really didn't have, I never saw really poor people until I came to Sacramento. And you know, you're in a small town like that you're also a much closer intimacy. There were, there was a Japanese older couple that ran a rooming house on the upper floor, but also a grocery store, Japanese grocery store. And there was an old friend that worked for the railroad. And I didn't realize I had forgotten that... I don't even remember whether I knew they were in Chico, but years later when, when the family that my, my mother helped rent the house in Sacramento when the evacuation became imminent, were living in Chico. And I, I think they moved away before I was old enough to really remember.

So there were lots of -- and there were farmers that came in. I don't know of any Japanese restaurants that were (there), but May Omura's father ran a very productive produce, open-stall kind of... a very popular place. And May stayed in Chico all her life until evacuation, but she was... I think she was in second year (in) nursing at Mills College when evacuation occurred, and so we did see each other after, when we were put into Tule Lake at the same time. And I hadn't... between the time I was seven and eighteen when evacuation occurred, I would only see May maybe once in two or three years, because life became quite different when you were in Sacramento.

AI: Well, and before leaving Chico, you were going to say about your father's decision to go into the insurance business.

EH: (Yes). And he could do that. I can't remember... I think it was shortly before we moved to, probably the major reason for our moving to Sacramento, because there was a branch office of Sun Life of Canada -- that was the insurance company's name -- in Sacramento. And he also had to go to San Francisco periodically. Once in every two months at least. So instead of coming from Chico, to be in Sacramento was a hundred miles (closer) to San Francisco. And I remember many trips going to, to San Francisco. I was really afraid of those ferry boats. I mean, I was so afraid that if, if something happened we would all sink because cars are so heavy. That kind of thinking. But also in San Francisco, because when my father first graduated high school, Galileo, I think, in San Francisco, he, he was in San Francisco for quite a while and became active in churches and things, so he knew a lot of people. Some of the prominent people that established the first inns in Japantown and (that) kind of thing. And so selling insurance, he... both my parents developed clients between Sacramento and San Francisco.

And I... it was fun to some extent to, to visit these farms, but I hated the long conversations that we had to sit through. I... once, when my sisters, there were five of us. And everybody in two-week intervals caught first measles and then they caught mumps after all the measles were gone. And I never caught 'em, but in those days you had "contagious disease" signs posted on your door, then you could not go to school. You couldn't, you practically couldn't come out of the house. So I missed about six or eight weeks of school, and what was my mother -- my dad... let's see. I guess that was before my mother... no, I remember, no, I think I had to travel with my mother, so I must have been, in '34 I would have been eleven. (Yes), that's when my father became ill, when I was eleven. So this, this contagious disease episode happened in the sixth grade, and I was eleven. So then helplessly, my mother had to take me with her when she had these insurance trips to take. And that to me was boring, because the kids were all in school, and I had to sit in the car to wait for her, and, and I reflect on that. I rationalize that that's why I'm a packrat now, because I took these long trips with my mother with nothing to do. And I, never again was I going to travel without some books or embroidery or something. So I, for a long time I always traveled with, with knitting. [Laughs] Anyway...

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.