<Begin Segment 52>

AI: Well, I'd like to take you back to, then, after, then World War II was over, and then what kind of communication did you have with your father? Did you hear that his illness was getting worse? Or how did it come about that you and your mother decided to go out to see him?

EH: Well, I guess it was time to go see him, for one thing. And we took that trip, stayed two or three, maybe a week. Then (later) we suddenly got a call from my sister, who was at UC Berkeley by then, and she was spending weekends going to see him. But from Berkeley to Weimar, it was a long bus ride, probably three or four hours. And it was in high elevation so it's snowing, and her big worry was that if she didn't get out there at the right time, the bus would miss her. 'Cause it wasn't a real station, bus station, of a kind, but I think the bus people knew that Weimar was, potentially had passengers boarding. But she frantically called one night to say that Pop had died. And it took her a while to locate us, and I can't remember why that was. Whether we didn't have a telephone -- I can't believe that we didn't have a telephone, but the call finally came in upstairs, to a Greek couple that was renting the flat upstairs. And I don't know whether there was something temporarily wrong with... or whether we somehow got the message and went upstairs to use telephone, because ours didn't work. But when she told us, gave us the news, then that's when I had to tell my mother to come and meet Mr. Howard, and we left.

(Yes), I guess there was one time when -- because on another trip, I forgot who that... my mother and I were traveling, and we had to come through Denver on a train. And it started snowing suddenly. And the train couldn't move any farther. So we had to get off -- I mean, everybody had to get off the train, and the Inais, who owned the house that we lived in, were in, had resettled in Denver. So, and we took a cab, and stayed at Inais for a couple nights 'til the train could get back to Chicago. (Yes), I'd forgotten about that. But while we were there, Mrs. Inai's younger sister by ten years, I think, who was kind of a good friend of mine as well as my mother, had kind of eloped and gotten married in Reno, and the wire came just while we there. That was a fun deal. (Yes), they, the Inais owned a super, supermarket in Denver called Toyo Market, or something. Mini Asian Market.

But after, when I was at Preferred -- and I must have been there almost three years, I got a call from the Chicago Resettlers Committee, Pat Shitama, who's, who I guess I'd met, I think, at that Pocatello conference. I don't know. But anyway, Pat called me to say, "We have this great job offer. Why don't you go see what it's like?" And I was ready for a change by then. So I went to work for American Council on Race Relations. That was at Forty-(ninth) and (Ellis), toward (the) south side of Chicago.

AI: And this would have been in 1947?

EH: (Yes), I think so.

<End Segment 52> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.