<Begin Segment 9>

AI: And did you say that you belonged to the Japanese Presbyterian church --

EH: Uh-huh.

AI: -- in Sacramento, and that your father got ac-, became very active with that church?

EH: No, my mother, my father was active to some extent I guess at the First Presbyterian Church in Chico and became its treasurer. And I don't know how long that went on, because that was before the days of my awareness of, of things like that. But when he came to Sacramento he, he took over the treasurer-ship, though I can't imagine that any institution, whether they were Japanese or just plain American church, that everybody had to have their own treasurer. And I'm sure it wasn't that there, there wasn't an adequate treasurer functioning, but probably my father's American style maybe did it. We had pictures of, of even the Presbytery gatherings where there are always a half a dozen Japanese among them. And so they were probably family friends. I know that the minister of our church was always represented in the men's club or men's, Presbyterian men's group or something like that. But it certainly... the church certainly became the center of our social life, and...

AI: And so you had the church and Sunday school on Sundays?

EH: Sunday school? (Yes). And I think I never taught Sunday school. I don't think in those days, right up to 1941, the people who taught Sunday school were more college age and sometimes even Issei women. I mean, I remember in my early childhood, my mother, they were at the Presbyterian -- my mother and a couple of other Issei women also taught Sunday school. And I think I was relieved when that passed. We did have what's... Presbyterians everywhere had a youth program called Christian Endeavor, CE as we called it. And we regularly had five o'clock Sunday afternoon meetings. And I, the Methodists had their Epworth League and Baptists had their BYPU, Baptist Young People's Union or something like that.

And then once a year, junior high/high school had a conference, Christian conference, and I forgot... the, the older population college age group were called Young People's Christian Conference, and that, that's true all over I think up and down the coast. The junior high/high school group was named something very similar to that, but every year we had that conference and they came up from even the rural churches then. So once a year we did get a chance to meet people that we only saw once a year. But they were, they were significant activities. The ministers, particularly the Nisei ministers, would kind of open our minds, our ideas, get us discussing. Sometimes whether the, the facts in the Bible as we knew them were, could be possible or I, I remember once, Jonah and the (Whale) was being discussed and I, I was at an age where I could doubt that and that kind of thing. But they were good social functions. They were usually weekends, and I remember at a supposed banquet, that the men really always wanted to take the lead. They were the cooks, they were whatever. And I remember at one of those conferences, my mother was telling... got home and told us that they argued about... they were going to present macaroni and cheese, and the women knew that the macaroni had to be cooked first, but the men didn't. And the men wouldn't give in, and they put the raw macaroni and tomato sauce and whatever in the oven, and here we were sitting and sitting and sitting waiting for the main course to come, and by the time it came it was still very hard. And I was so appalled. I... it wasn't my fault, and it wasn't a real reflection on my mother, but I came home and said, "What, what happened to that macaroni and cheese? How come... you cook macaroni all the time. How come you let that happen?" And my mother said, "You know those jiisans" -- meaning those old men -- "wouldn't, almost wouldn't let us into the kitchen." But I... that was a big social lesson that men can't always be -- you know, in camp that happened. The men always wanted -- at least in the Sacramento area -- the men had to be the head cooks. And we always grumbled, and the women were always saying, "We could have done it so much better." And, and yet as I remember Tule Lake, the Northwesterners had better food, because there were more people in, in the Northwest population who had jobs in, in the big hotels and other places where they would need... and so they knew how to cook. But in the Sacramento area, the cooks, the men were farmers or, or ran hotels or... and though I had a friend, who, whose parents ran a Mexican restaurant, but anyway, they certainly could have done better.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.