<Begin Segment 9>

TI: You mentioned a comment about living in someone's shadow. Was it a case where, because of the things that you had done, did those things affect the relationship? That you were often times in the forefront of an example? In some ways, you mentioned earlier how the Quakers used you as an example a lot?

GH: Well...

TI: Did that affect your marriage?

GH: No, I don't think it affected it negatively. However, in role relationships -- I think, you know, she's Floyd Schmoe's daughter. Floyd Schmoe's daughter means, you know, he's not a, he wasn't a wealthy magnate worth millions and all that sort of thing. However, he was a tremendous person in terms of ideas and exploratory actions, and breaking the fence doing new things, houses for Hiroshima. Going over, he didn't have money to go over so he worked with the Church of Brethren on the "goat boat," bringing in animals to Japan. They needed care taking, [Laughs] shoveling out and so on. He did all sorts of things to get over there. And then, soon as he got there he went on his own making his own contacts and finding the lay of the land, and where he could... and finally Hiroshima was rebuilding. And he got to brass tacks talking with the housing project where he could become part of the housing project. He opposed, and in fact he was a minority, except that he's a decision maker for his project, so it became the position, his... he didn't want, people said it's better to build a house, you know, where people move in. No, housing project, building a community center where they could get together out of their homes, and having a center thing. He opposed that. He said, what he wanted to symbolize was reinstating the family unit where they could start new families, having their own home. So that's the thing, and what kind of center is developed could be somebody else's project.

TI: And so as Floyd did these, these large innovative projects, did that place a burden on Esther? Being the daughter of...

GH: No.

TI: ...Floyd?

GH: No, but it, she, in many ways, admired -- [laughs] -- I don't know that I should put this under tape, because I don't, it's a kind of a private feeling.

TI: We can cut this all out, too.

GH: Yeah, on her part even. She, she, she had a kind of a black and white picture of her dad. Admired him. He was a hero to her, for all the things that she wished she had the freedom to do. He just had those views and did 'em, as much as he could. And he worked out ways to do them. And, but on the other hand, she was determined never to be victimized like her mother was. She lived her life at the whim of her husband's decision, "I got a call to do this." And they were great calls, but somebody had to, somebody had to take care of the kids. Somebody had to feed 'em in the face of adequate income. [Laughs] The kids, like Ken, Ken Schmoe, he, his favorite food is hamburger gravy. That's what he got. He got to like that and he misses it when it's not available. When he was working, his first job as an engineer was to work on the technical part of, with a company in New York, big company -- gee, what is that? Electrical, mechanical outfit. And they shifted their focus from whatever they were doing to much more in the computer line and so on. But they were going for training on trains. You know, it took several days to get to New York area. And people were ordering things, and they said to Ken, "When we order steak and you order hamburger, it sounds like we're padding the thing. You know you're making it look bad on us." He says, "Well, I'm not trying to save the company money, I just like that." [Laughs]

TI: Right. So Esther saw her mother sort of holding the family together...

GH: Yeah.

TI: ...while the father would have these callings and do these very visible...

GH: Yeah, and she'd have to be a part of it too, 'cause he'd ask her once the thing is fairly clear moving that he's for, you know. So, it's not like -- now, is he ready, now can we, "How's this call relate to breadwinner responsibilities here? You've got four kids, and me. Is this the time to do this call?" You know, those discussions never came up. It's, "I got this call and he's got it developed to a certain point, and potentialities from the outside up to a certain point." And then he's just, you know, "I gotta work this out with you because this is a family project. I need to be released to go. And I feel strongly called to do this. And it's not enough for us to say we're sorry, or we wish it didn't happen to Hiroshima victims. I'd rather be there and show concrete family homes that people can move into, to express what we feel." That's why he wanted this, he didn't think a community center would do the same thing, symbolically.

So those ideas are great. And she admired that as an example of all sorts of things he did in his life. But usually he needed his wife's sacrifice at the same time. And his wife had migraine headaches from early in her life all the way to menopause. And she thought it was something that just women suffered, you know. Well menopause is a period they went through, and then periods, monthly periods, and so on. Women went through them, but not necessarily migraine headaches. And she, she suddenly, with menopause came a time when there was more, more freedom. And like she said when she moved into her last apartment, had washing machine, dryer, oven, and various kinds of electrical gadgets. And then, Ken, being an electrical engineer, he fixed up all kinds of facilities, wiring and so on. So she says, "Boy, wouldn't I have liked to have had even just part of this when the kids were growing up." When she had about sixty diapers to hang [Laughs] and so on. And she did all this. And she couldn't object to the project. He wasn't goofing off, or self-sacrif -- self enjoying something somewhere and asking her to accept that. He's sacrificing his time and effort.

TI: So Esther had this very close up view of this.

GH: Yeah.

TI: And so was one of the issues with Esther and her relationship with you, that similar thing would happen to her, or was happening to her?

GH: Well, I think she, she admired, admired the thing, and, and in retrospect, you might say that she's admiring some of the things I was doing, I had done, and I'm doing. At the same time, she wanted to elevate herself out of being in a place where she had to foot all the shortcomings of the cost of this thing that she's admiring. And so she has that. She wanted to protect herself from that. And so she's looking, and she's saying, "Well..." I mean there wasn't somebody she fell in love with, and therefore she wanted to rethink this continued marriage. She, she felt that on all kinds of things, if a new front that's being planned, it ought to be cleared as early as possible, as quickly as possible, because the longer it takes, the less opportunity she would have, you know as a divorcee, or widow, or whatever. She's gonna be older, and so on. And so from that angle, the cleaner we fix, come to a conclusion on this for the next twenty-five years, so to speak -- because we're talking about the last twenty-five years -- the better. And with that exploration in mind and all the things that emerges from planning, and experiencing, and making decisions, and this and that, it, we ended up -- after about two or three months -- we ended up very clearly for each of us, that we should explore, searching new patterns for ourselves.

TI: When it came out during these discussions, did it surprise you that, that she felt this way?

GH: No, no, it didn't surprise me, but it was sad in a way, except, except I found myself in agreement with her conclusions. So I must have been moving along that way, too. That whenever these things happen, if you're ready to move or ready to think more about it, maybe that's the time to be thinking more about it. And so we did have the time to really go through that in real detail as far as we could see it. And then following up, the next two, three months was really a ongoing search. And, and so when we decided, it was, it was, well, in a way it was surprising to us that that's what we decided. We couldn't have predicted clearly two months earlier. Our kids, I asked them, "Now that you know this is the path we're taking, can you think back now and say, 'Ah, yeah, I could see signs of that here and there in retrospect.' At the time you didn't, but can you see, can you see that, because you've lived through all this, in a way. You're part of the picture that made up the past, twenty-five years, very much so." And, and they said, "No, we can't even picture... gee, now that we think of this, that might have been one of the symptoms." We didn't, we weren't in the habit of, you know, when you get mad you're breaking furniture, or you're smashing something or, you know, you're getting, letting your emotions out. We didn't do that, so they, either we suppressed it or we didn't have it.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.