<Begin Segment 13>

AI: So, and my understanding from doing a little bit of reading, I read that Father Murphy was a well-known Catholic priest who did quite a bit of work in the community among the Japanese families and Japanese Americans, and so he had quite a reputation at that time. Well, so then how did things end up? You stayed with Father Murphy, he was insisting to you that you had to get married, what happened?

PB: Well, then they had a baishakunin like the Japanese, the old-fashioned way, and like all mothers, their son is too good to marry a country girl. My mother, on the other hand, no man was good enough for her daughter -- [laughs] -- and it was like that, so it was just a simple, I remember just a simple ceremony held at the Baptist church. And my mother wouldn't come; my dad was the only one that, I think my dad was there. And there was one man who was sort of a witness, I guess. But I just got married in church, and that was it.

AI: That must have been a very difficult experience.

PB: It was, and I kept trying to go home after that. I didn't want to be married; I wanted to go home. But nobody would help me, I didn't know anybody in town. Here I was a total stranger in town, I was just like a lost teenager that didn't know what to do, and nobody there to help me. [Interruption] I went down to the -- I remember one rainy night, I went down to the restaurant and tried to get them to help me, take me home, but they wouldn't do it. "You're married now, so we can't do anything." That much I remember.

AI: So you were really trapped.

PB: Yes, I was trapped. I had a very stormy, unhappy life in my youth.

AI: When was that? Was that in 1926 that you were married?

PB: Uh-huh.

AI: And I think you might have mentioned at an earlier time that that was in the fall, was it? October?

PB: I think I... I don't know if I have that original marriage license or not. I think I do. But that broke all ties with my family. My mother said I was never to set foot at home anymore, and I wasn't to correspond with any of my siblings. She cut me off completely, and here I was trying to come home, but nobody would lift a finger, and I wasn't getting along with my mother-in-law, because she didn't want me in the family.

AI: Were you living with your mother-in-law at the time?

PB: Yes.

AI: In Seattle?

PB: Uh-huh. Well, at first, we were living... I don't remember what the name of that hotel was now. [Pauses] No, we weren't living with our mother-in-law, we were living in an apartment. I was unfamiliar with gas stoves, I didn't know much about cooking with a gas stove. I was scared to death, the stove would make a popping noise. And I was afraid of gas; I hated the smell of it in the first place. And in those days, there was cockroaches and bedbugs, just like old Chicago.

AI: So your, your living situation was, was pretty difficult.

PB: It was really terrible, because I didn't know anything about city living. I was even afraid to cross the street by myself. I just wasn't used to being in the city.

AI: Well, and then how, how was your husband making a living?

PB: He was working in a sawmill in Eatonville. In the summertime, he was going to Alaska. In those days, lot of the Japanese went to the canneries to work. And he would go fishing in Alaska.

AI: So he, so part of the year, he was out at the sawmill, and then during the summer months he would go out to Alaska.

PB: And he didn't stay with me much; he, when he was home in Seattle, he was always down at the pool hall. He loved to play pool, and he spent all his time down at the pool hall; he never was home.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.