<Begin Segment 18>

TI: And so, so going back, you returned to Portland, you're with your mother, and describe what you did in Portland.

FK: Well, I transferred from the civil service job to Portland. And I first transferred to OPA, Office of Price Administration, and then, and then I got the job that I liked better at Bonneville Power Administration. So I worked there until I got married. And then when I, when I got married and came up here, I transferred my job to the Bonneville Power, BPA office here. So it was, so civil service, so you could transfer as long as there's a job.

TI: Going back to Portland, what differences did you see in Portland when you returned after these years being gone?

FK: Well, there was still a lot of discrimination. People had a hard time getting apartments, so after my, we, after I went back, before my brother and my, my brother had gotten married in Japan. When he was there also in the occupation forces, he got married in Japan to a Japanese girl. So before they came back, we moved to a housing project in Vanport, have you heard of that?

TI: No, I haven't.

FK: It's just... you've been to Portland.

TI: Uh-huh.

FK: Just after the bridge between Washington and Oregon. In that area where the horse races on this side, but the other side there were auto races now? Well, that's where they had a housing project.

TI: Okay.

FK: And it was down low like this, see. Columbia River's on the other side, and there was a dike there and railroad tracks on the... anyway, what happened was we were there, and in '48, yeah, in '48 they had a big flood. You don't remember, I mean, you never heard of that?

TI: No.

FK: Yeah.

TI: And so was everything just flooded?

FK: What happened was the Corps of Engineers, you know, in fact this was Memorial Day, the Corps of Engineers that morning, we had, they had a note under all our doors saying that everything is safe, they're watching the dike, and everything is safe. Well, I understand that there was leaking, the water leaking from below that they didn't, they ignored, or I don't know what happened. Well, if the dike breaks, just like in Louisiana, you know, the whole river came and wiped out the whole housing project. And luckily it was Memorial Day so we were all out to the cemetery, and so most of us were out. And the Caucasians, maybe they were on vacation or whatever, and a lot of people were out. So we were lucky because the houses, all the, not the barracks, but the houses were all tipped over. And that whole area just flooded right away. And these people, we were coming back from the memorial, the cemetery, and we heard all these sirens, you know, and we said, "What's going on?" And as we got nearer, well, we knew, we knew something happened. So we got out of the car and we walked over there. And the police were trying to get everybody out of the, the highway because they were, some people were stopped and watching the people trying to get away from, get out of there. And so we said, "Now, what are we gonna do?" what we had on, and that was all we had left. And so my mother says, "Well, let's go to the church," you know. And by golly, lot of people did, the church members went to church. And then says, "Now what are we going to do?" But this Japanese schoolteacher that we knew lived across from the church, and she offered for us to stay there couple nights until we found an apartment. So we stayed there, but we had to go out and get a toothbrush, I mean, soap, everything. [Laughs]

TI: So were there quite a few Japanese staying in this area?

FK: Yeah, because housing was not, housing was tight.

TI: That's what I wanted to ask. So coming back to Portland, what happened to the old Japantown area? Was that...

FK: Well, we were, yeah, that was no more. Now it's more, it was more Chinatown, but I don't know how it is now. It's still all the Chinese restaurants there.

TI: And so pretty much did the Chinese take over the housing and the stores and everything that was there before?

FK: I don't know if they took over, but they were also in that area, so, both the Chinese and the Japanese.

TI: So I guess the question is, so why couldn't the Japanese community move back to where they lived before? It was all, like, already...

FK: No, there was nothing really for them there.

TI: So places like, you know, where the churches were, they were all kind of located in that area, weren't they? And so...

FK: Not really. Our church was on the other side of the bridge, east side. So it wasn't, it wasn't anything near the Japanese town. And that church was still there.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.