<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Yeah, so I wanted to ask you, although you worked on the farms, when you would come back to Spokane -- during this period, quite a few Japanese sort of voluntarily relocated to Spokane because it was out of the exclusion zone. So there were more Japanese and Japanese Americans coming to Spokane.

RY: Yeah.

TI: When you would come back to Spokane, how would, how would Spokane, sort of that downtown area, how would that be changing?

RY: Well, I don't know... I didn't feel any change, 'cause I don't know, I didn't, I wasn't... I didn't, I didn't think there was any. I don't know, church, I go to church, there wasn't anything there that made, made me feel different. Judo, we didn't have judo at that time until real late, in '34 or... so I didn't, I wasn't getting close to any Japanese families. But in... but my mother noticed that, well, I wasn't doing anything, and my brother, oldest brother, aeronautical engineer wasn't doing anything, so he got, my brother Ed, he's what do you call them, quadriplegic, he had to be... well, he, he couldn't walk too well at that time. And so she started us out on this apartment house, which was a fairly nice apartment house.

TI: So your mother got the three brothers sort of started in the apartment management business?

RY: Yeah. So, well, then my brother, my brother Ed, he got himself wrapped up in his bookkeeping. He was, he went to Spokane Business College to take up bookkeeping, and my brother Floyd, he was, he was an aeronautical engineer, so one of his friends, architect friends, hired him as a, I guess, I don't know, what do they do? Drawing?

TI: Sort of a draftsman?

RY: Yeah, draftsman, that's it. And so after that, well...

TI: So where did Floyd graduate from to get his aeronautical engineering degree?

RY: Oh, he graduated from the University of Washington, and what year, I forgot what year, but then, but he tells me that there was other, other students that were not as, you might say, bright as him, were getting hired from Boeing, and he wouldn't get hired. So he decided to go to Japan, that was before the war. And he went to Japan and within a year, he got a job, right away. And he was telling me that as long as there are university students, graduate from a university, you are the, what do you call them, the masters or sensei. And they always bowed to him, you know, while he was working there.

TI: So it's interesting, so when he graduated with his aeronautical engineering degree, he couldn't get a job in Boeing, and when he went to Japan, he got a job quickly, and they, they really sort of looked up to him because of his, his education. So in one place he was shunned, and another place he was, he was accepted.

RY: Right. And then just before the war, January or February, the company that he was working for told him to go back to the United States and get more educated on, you know, aeronautical engineering, go to the different factories and learn a little bit more. So that was, I guess it was... it was, it was a little before Pearl Harbor, and they sent him back, he went, he went to work at California, one of those factories down there.

TI: So I'm curious, when he was in Japan and they sent him back, I'm curious, did he have any inking that, that there might be war between Japan and the United States?

RY: No, he didn't have any inkling. But after it started, you would think that they had something, but he didn't have any idea, or they didn't talk about it over there, I guess. He was just, he was just another employee over there. But he, they, they were kind of impressed with his, his working knowledge of what he had, and he's improved a couple of things, I guess. I don't know, he told me some, couple of little things that he improved at the, at the factory, and they kind of liked him. So I guess that's, that's why they told him to come back and learn a little more.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.