<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So Yosh, let's now go to, coming back to Seattle. Your parents wanted to come back home to Seattle; how did you feel when you heard that you were coming back to Seattle?

YN: I was excited.

TI: Now, how old were you at this point?

YN: I was going to now be in middle school; I was going to be -- an exciting time. I was going to be in the seventh grade. If I was normal I would have been in seventh... see, broken by semesters. I would have been in the second half of the seventh grade. But, so I was excited, because... I didn't know what the excitement was, because I'm certain my parents were not excited in the same sense I was excited. But it's interesting, 'cause I don't know if I could have done what my parents did. They had nothing; no bed, no furniture, no home.

TI: Did you remember what you came back with? I mean, was it, again, what you could just --

YN: I remember what I came back with. What little we had when we went. No, we didn't have more (...). We could only take back what we had. That was very smart. That's all, we never needed to worry about packing, all right? But we ended up in the, in the (Japanese) Methodist church, (a hostel, 'til we were able to find housing in Seattle).

TI: Well, even before then, so you, you would come to the train station, the Union Station?

YN: Right. And we'd get on the train and come back to Seattle.

TI: And did someone meet you then at the train station?

YN: No, not in that sense. Not in that sense that they're gonna help you relocate, make sure you have food or anything else. But we internally, the greatness, took care of these needs which were not done (only) by the Niseis per se, it must have been done by the Isseis because my wife and her family left Tule Lake (also), ended up in (Japanese) Methodist church, too, and they were very strong Buddhists.

TI: So the Methodist church became a hostel...

YN: Hostel.

TI: ...for your family to, to live, initially.

YN: And they don't have a history of that in their books. They just celebrated their hundredth anniversary.

TI: Now, why wasn't... why didn't you go to Baptist church?

YN: Because it was filled with the belongings of the people Reverend Andrews stored in the gymnasium, and that was all the space was all (full of) belongings of people that had the foresight (to store) that they would come back. We had nothing in there because my parents, I don't think, ever thought they'd get to come back.

TI: So what was it like being at the Methodist Church?

YN: I remember that much more clearly because you're back in a cot, you had no privacy. But this was different than being interned. My parents were anxiously trying to find a place to start anew, what I call the new frontier that we talk so proudly in America. The pioneers that forged out the greatness of America. My parents were the true pioneers. And amazingly, they found two other families (to) live in a little broken-down shed, what they called a home, and we three families lived in (this) place, right down at that bottom of the hill from Bailey Gatzert. And from there I walked to Washington middle school up there on Seventeenth and (Washington). That was the new beginning of education for me, the new freedom. And do you know the common thread of life? I started to deliver The Seattle Times.

TI: Right about then you started selling newspapers?

YN: Isn't that amazing? That's the story you have to hear. These are not by accident. The world gives reason to who you are.

TI: That's interesting.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.