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EH: And so I worked for the Quakers for maybe almost a year, and, and then somebody called me about another job at the YMCA, which was paying more than the Quakers could pay, and that's all right. I think I worked at the Quakers for a full year. And when I took the live-in job at Bakers', they were just five minutes away, over the Roosevelt Bridge, and I could take a bus right to the foot of U Way, where American Friends were. And the, the YMCA was, the American Friends were on, like, Forty-second, and the YMCA, the next job I took, was on Fiftieth. So it wasn't that much of a difference as far as travel goes. And that was convenient -- the Bakers were another issue. They, they were both Garfield graduates, and he was a lawyer and she just stayed home with two kids.

But when Ralph started picking me up to, on weekend dates or something, Jane got furious. And, and it was interesting because one night, Ralph was waiting there, and they were having company, and her mother was there. And her mother turned out to be a Mrs. Robbins, who was in the, in the journalism classes with Ralph. And so they got to talking about classes and comparing professors and that kind of thing, and Mrs. Robbins just helped herself and made couple of cups of tea with, with Ralph. And, but Jane, despite the fact that she was proud of being a Garfield graduate, had said to me at some, in some course of events, course of time, she said, "Now, I love having you live with us, but I could never live next door to a black person." She couldn't, she couldn't tolerate a black person in the house, much less even live next door to that person. But, and she was angry at her mother for going to the door and letting Ralph in, and then having the gall to set a cup of coffee, or tea. And her, her husband also said, "Jane, get off of that." And he was adamant. And it was funny, 'cause they, they had some good friends who were from the South, but somehow they knew them. And this friend made annual trips to Seattle, because he had to see his great-grandparents, slaves' families, had settled here. And they were, I never met them, I can't, don't even know their names now. But, but he was astounded at Jane Baker's reaction, and said, "I would never hesitate to -- I wish I could get them to come down South and see the rest of the family."

And so that was, that -- and that went on for a little while, but, but then when we decided to get married, she took me to, she was as excited about the wedding, and she took me to her seamstress, who turned out to be Susie Tsukuyama. Anyway, she was a well-, her husband had the florist, Johnny's florist on the Avenue. But anyway, but in the course of the wedding issue, Jane forgot her, her prejudice. And, and we got married in this little Church of the People, which was a small congregation that broke away. He, Fred Shorter was dismissed from a very posh Capitol Hill congregational church that called him straight out of Yale Divinity School. And he was a very good speaker, an Australian, and carried on, we learned a lot from Fred and the whole congregation. But when my newsletters from the Church of the People would weekly come, Jane Baker's family turned out to be part of that congregation that evicted him from the posh Congregational Church. I forget... Pilgrim Prospect Congregation. Prospect Pilgrim... there's a third Congregational -- there's two Congregational churches on Capitol Hill. This one is right off Broadway. But anyway, she was dying to know the insides of this newsletter. Because Fred really was a very articulate and ethical, politically aware, and among other things, they had a Great Books discussion group, which was very popular in those days. And Jane being an English major, would have died to be in, in this, in this book club. And, but she didn't dare unglue the newsletter, but she could hardly wait for me to come home so she could read it.

And those were, by the time the wedding came along, and it was at, held in this, this church had... they somewhere got this big, square building. I don't know the, maybe they built it. But it was, it was not more than -- it was almost like a barrack, a half a barrack, kind of, with, very plain bank of south windows that looked out over a sunken garden. And then downstairs were offices, the first floor off the street was offices, and then they built this dormitory. The exit of that dormitory, actually, faces Campus Parkway. But it was open to the public, and lunch for fifty cents, dinner for a dollar, and students from all over the world were just coming back. So it was very exciting to hear from all the students, and there were a lot of Indian students, because India had gotten their independence, and they were eagerly training all their young, all, as many places as possible in the world, and there were a lot of aeronautical engineers because of Boeing. Though this church was basically a Socialist, pacifist church, and Fred Shorter would kid the students about their fields.

Even my mother, when Ralph got aggravated with this red-baiting assignment all the time, took a leave and went to work for Boeing, my mother wrote a letter saying, "If you build 'bomps'" -- and she always misspelled, she always says B-O-M-P -- "your house is also going to get 'bomped' one day." And she claimed to be a pacifist, but then when, when Larry was born, and then maybe when Peter was born, and then my sister had three sons in Berkeley, my mother would say, "Oh, now I have my own army." [Laughs] And Ralph would say, "Wait a minute, Mom. You said you were a pacifist. You can't be a pacifist and have a army." But, you know, boys have kind of a status symbol in, if you come from Japan. So she prides herself in boys. But she came, when she, she got married in '50, and we got married in '51, so Reverend and --

AI: Excuse me, your sister got married in...

EH: No, my mother. My mother got remarried to -- well, I have to go back and tell you about the two Yoshioka girls that... they must have met at the church on Michigan Avenue, and it was a non-denominational church, so when Esther, Esther was probably ten or twelve, no, maybe eleven or twelve, when Sara and, befriended her, and because Reverend was a minister, her, Esther's father was a minister who lost his wife, I think, I don't know whether in Manzanar, but early in evacuation, he had ten kids. And Esther was at the bottom of the ten, so Esther was probably five or six years without a mother, but she had lots of older sisters and brothers. But then by, when evacuation came along, Julie, I think, who was a sister just above her, was the same age as Jean. And they must have also met at the church. But anyway, Julie, and then she had a, the sister above her was also in high school, May. Anyway, so there was nobody home but Esther and her father. And, you know, Reverend didn't know that much about cooking and all, so Esther used to love to come to our house on the weekends. And my mother was pretty routine and disciplinary about cleaning, and I never really did learn to be a good housekeeper. But she had Sara polishing all the furnitures every, every Saturday morning. And my mother would say, "Esther, if you're (going to) be here on the weekend, you have to get a dustcloth, too." And so poor Esther was having to cope with that, but she would, at the dinner table, my mother was always making natto. And Esther said, "Gee, Obasan, why don't you invite my father? He would love this." And my mother said, "Well, tell him to come." And that's how they met and eventually got married. And I think Reverend Yoshioka also was maybe from the northern Japan, Akita-ken, just... Sendai, I think. But my mother, being the Protestant person she was, loved being -- and I think maybe in all churches, the minister's wife has a certain amount of status and social, in the social hierarchy. But people are always going to be respectful and kindly of minister's wives, despite the fact that ministers don't get a great salary. It's a struggle to be a minister's family. But anyway, pretty soon he was sleeping at our house, and, and then one morning, I guess he said, "We have to go downtown." My mother feels that he -- he was twenty years older than my mother. He had retired by the time he was in evacuation camp, and his oldest brother was in the relocation office in Chicago. So that's one of the, I think that's also the reason how Esther and Jean landed that Curtis Candy Company's daughter's domestic job.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.