<Begin Segment 16>

AI: So before the break, you were just telling us that your mother remarried to Reverend...

EH: Yoshioka.

AI: In 1949, and then in 1950, you and Ralph were married out here in Seattle, at the Church of the People.

EH: No. Well, (yes), we did get married at the Church of the People, where we had a small apartment on... that apartment was owned by a black/white, and black and white guy, a black guy and a white guy. And the Douglass Apartments kind of historically, in black history here in Seattle, is a main -- I don't know whether you know the name Millie Russell, she's a minority affairs kind of counselor at the U. I think she said she was born there, at the Douglass Apartments. The hospitals probably would not allow blacks to practice. I had Jewish doctor friends who couldn't get into a lot of, like Providence wouldn't allow them. But there was a black doctor who established his medical practice in the Douglass Apartments. It's an old, frame, three- or four-story building, no elevators. But that's where we lived for about a year.

AI: And where were the Douglass Apartments?

EH: Twenty-fourth off of Madison, at Twenty-fourth Avenue, or Twenty-fourth Street. Anyway, it was a sizeable... and so my mother, who was scheduled to come at a certain date, and we, we rented a hideaway bed, a fold-up bed, a portable bed, because we only had one bedroom. And, but she comes the day before the bed is due, delivered. And she knocks on the door and, and I said, "What, you weren't supposed to come 'til tomorrow. How did you get here?" "Oh, we came by train, we got a cab, and gave them your address and they dropped us off." And Ralph was at, was at an Urban League meeting, I think, that night. And he came home and he's shocked, and my mother just laughs and said, "(Yes), Inspector General has arrived." [Laughs] And Ralph said, "Listen, Mom, you're not any kind of an inspector coming to my house, you're coming to visit."

And the, one of the things that she wanted -- she was only here for three or four days -- one of the things she wanted to do was serve lunch, do a lunch for Japanese ministers. And so she tells me the next day to pick up a couple of stewing chickens, 'cause she wants to make creamed chicken and serve it to the minister. So I don't, at that point, I don't know anything about, much about cooking, and so I asked a nutrition education person, "How, how do you, what do you do with stewed chickens?" And she said, "Well, you have to cook it a long time." And so I bought two stewed chickens and took it home the next day, and stuck it in the refrigerator. And I, my mother ordered that and I assumed she knew what to do with it. Next day, I came home from work and I said, "How did the luncheon go?" And she kind of laughed and said, "Well, they ate a lot of rice and salad and peas." And I said, "What about the chicken?" And she said, "Mmm, I don't know." And I said, "Didn't you cook it?" "(Yes), I cooked it." So I said, "Where is it?" And I thought we were probably going to have leftover for dinner. And I went to pierce it and get a piece out, you couldn't even stick a fork into it. [Laughs] And she should have known that, she was, she lived on the rice ranch, and they must, they had chicken. And anyway, I was appalled that she, she... I should have gotten... now if I think of it, if she said she, I would have gotten plain, ordinary fryers, because that's what we use now. But here she, here were these two big chickens, and you couldn't even stick a fork in. They, it took another two hours of cooking before we could all have supper, and I thought, "Boy, I'm glad I wasn't there. How embarrassing." I thought, "The poor ministers." I said, "What did everybody eat?" She said, "Oh, lots of rice and gravy." [Laughs] And that was that. I just, I don't know that I ever allowed my mother to really cook in my presence, I'd have to take it over. She, you know, she was, she was a businessman. She used to tell the Inais, who had the grocery store, and if one of us couldn't be there to cook, she would have to substitute. And Mrs. Inai used to say, "Your mother always comes to buy vegetables for dinner, but saying, 'What can I cook without cooking? What can I have for dinner without cooking?'" And so she would, Mrs. Inai was always gathering tomatoes and celery and things like that. She really did not like to cook.

But on that trip, my mother said they were going to Mt. Rainier on Saturday, and I said, "Oh..." see, we had, we had been there a year, maybe a little over a year. We had not seen, we had not -- we didn't have a car, we didn't, limited means, you know, living on a, my meager salaries, and I forgot, it was maybe 150 dollars at the time, and Ralph's GI bill. So I said, "Oh, gee, ask Reverend if we could -- " and the, the minister that was in Tacoma's Methodist church was a, he used to be the Sacramento minister. So I could have, I knew him to some extent, so my mother asks if Ralph and I could go, and so we went all the way to Mt. Rainier and back, and Mrs. Niiwa packed the usual Japanese lunch, the onigiri and tsukemono and that was a, a nice treat for us. The, one other thing I -- speaking of nigiri -- when my, when Mother and I went to see my father as soon as we could, we were -- or no, maybe, maybe that was after the funeral. We were on our way back to Chicago, and there was a black porter on the, on the train. And Mrs. Inai's sister -- Inais were in Denver by then, but her sister was in Sacramento, George Nishikawa's mother -- and they had fixed a, fixed a nice big lunch for us to have on train, and so we were eating this Japanese lunch, and my mother ordered a, offered the onigiri to, to this black porter. And he says, "Oh, thank you, but anything but that." He said, "In Japan, the occupation forces, they, they were there," probably, but then he says, "I could eat anything, I love Japanese food, but I cannot swallow that lump of rice," he said. But everything else he, he ate, and I'll, I'll always remember that. But when we went, we went to Mt. Rainier and back, and anyway, that was a great event. The Japanese ministers like to gather every occasion they could.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.