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BH: So let's go back to your situation. You were at school.

KH: And she was at cadet nursing.

BH: And then you were, you said that you were only in school from 1943 to 1945. So you didn't graduate from...

KH: No.

BH: And you got married instead. So you were married to Joe Hashisaki, so let's, let's start talking about him.

KH: Okay.

BH: You met Joe in 1945, in May, and you married him in August of the same year.

KH: Uh-huh.

BH: So that was a short time to know somebody, so tell me about that.

KH: He was really persistent. He would call me, see, I was working how many hours? I think I was working twenty hour a week on my scholarship, and so I'd be working and then my study time was very limited. But there were no telephone calls accepted in the, in the dorms until nine o'clock at, at night. And on the dot at nine o'clock, he would call, and he wouldn't let me get off the telephone. I had girlfriends, two or three standing in line wanting to make telephone calls, and he wouldn't let me get off the telephone. I should have just hung up on him. [Laughs] But he would take a lot of my study time, on weekends he would come and visit with me and we would go out on a date. And then we would go out to dinners, or we would go to the Akamatsus'.

BH: So how did you two meet?

KH: We were invited to dinner at the Akamatsus', who's a couple from St. Paul itself, they had a gift shop. And Mrs. Akamatsu is a former Seattleite, so friendships, she knew some of the people that I knew, and she would have us over and we would visit. And Dorothy Kanegaye is from, was from California. She was in a camp in Arkansas, and she and I would both go over to the Akamatsus' and have Japanese dinners. Anyway, Joe and a fellow named Lieutenant Nakaki went to the gift shop looking for those plastic playing cards, and the Akamatsus did not have any, but they visited with Joe and Lieutenant Nakaki and says, "Why don't you come over to the house for dinner sometime? We'll try and get two girls from St. Catherine's over." And so that's how, how I met Joe. Lieutenant Nakaki and Joe decided before they walked in the door at Akamatsus' that Joe would speak with the short girl and Lieutenant Nakaki talk, talk with the taller girl. Well, Dorothy was taller than I was, so she was matched with Lieutenant Nakaki and I was matched with Joe. And so we, we visited and had dinner and then the fellows called the taxi and brought us back to campus, which is quite a distance. Anyway, when we got out of the taxi and Dorothy and I said goodbye, she was going to her Whitby Hall dorm and I was going to mine, Derham, and she said, "You know, Mary Jane," she says, "I think Joe is smitten with you," right then. [Laughs] And sure enough, he started calling on me and going, we started going out on dates.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.