<Begin Segment 5>

TI: The question is, as you were progressing, the relationship progresses, to the point where you now, with Esther, were getting the marriage license...

GH: Oh yes.

TI: ...the reaction of others? And...

GH: Well, there was, there were always the question of the others, because you live in society and you interact with others. And even if your close circle of intimate friends approve, you had to also be aware that there is this larger society you live in, and how they felt. And also your parents and their intimate circles, and the outer circle they confront. So all of those things come into the picture. But in her case, when our relationship became more personal and more intimate, we began to talk about the possibility of marriage and we faced this a step at a time. For example, she was intending to become a nurse. There's a three-year training for nurse, basically, and if you're a Bachelor of Science, and R.N. also, it's about a five-year program. So she has some years to move ahead. Now I guess there's no rule saying that along the way you might get married. But there is this period you have to make a decision. We know that these things are gonna be involved. We have now decided that a future together is also a part of the picture being involved. And on my side, I didn't know exactly what would happen, but all through the war I'm gonna run into problems and forced separations. So while that didn't prevent us from thinking about a life together at some point, we have to be prepared for being separate and having absences, and having our relationship with that reality in the picture.

So as we move along we make decisions and making it one at a time. One of things that we did in the picture was to, we came to the point of, gee, getting married requires a license. And a license doesn't mean it's gonna expire after, at least we didn't know whether it expired if you didn't act on it within a certain time. But we figured there's certain amount of time, leeway. So at one point we thought, "Why don't we go and register for marriage?" So that we wouldn't have that to wait on if something came up, needing to speed it up. So we took that step. And then on the way out of the marriage bureau, we ran into a fellow Quaker, who happened to be a reporter for the Spokane Chronicle. And he says, "Oh, I have to write that up for the paper." And I said, "I don't want, we don't want it in the paper." "Well, there's no way it's going to escape not being in the paper. So, either I write up a good base story, based on facts and the perspectives you have and the motives and all that, and the families, or, it'll get on without my input and you don't know what goes in there and they may get a cloudy erroneous picture suitable for the prejudiced public to read." Well, he convinced us that it was inevitable, and so he would have to do that. And so we gave him additional information about parents that he wanted to know. He knew basically about us, so that, we didn't have to repeat that part. And so that's how it got in the papers. And to show you the temper of the time, and I'm, I think it's different now in terms of general public reaction. I, that's my prediction. I think times have changed in the fifty years since that took place. If, but, when the news went out of our marriage, it hit the wire, wire service -- it went all over the world and hit the U. S. -- I've forgotten what the service...

TI: Would it be Stars and Stripes?

GH: The Stars and Stripes.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.