<Begin Segment 27>

TI: And then tell me how it was seeing your parents after all this, your military service.

JS: Well, yeah, it was kind of sad because my father and mother were working essentially as, as house servants. But they were happy, they enjoyed living in a part of the country, New England states, and they liked to travel by bus or whatever and visit the historic areas of the U.S. They went back there because when they first came to the U.S., to America, they landed in Seattle and spent all the years there, and had never traveled.

TI: And so for you, when you said it was sad, why was it sad to see...

JS: Well, it was sad to, in my mind, because to see your parents working as, as servants. And they had, my dad had a college education and so did my mother. And so they had spent their lives here, and of course they had raised all of us, and that's a chore in itself. But to see them working as, it was just sad, that's all.

TI: And so did they eventually make it back to the West Coast?

JS: No, they didn't. I had, Sally was living in Connecticut, and Pat Oyabe, I don't know if you know Pat Oyabe, but your dad knows Pat. But my father and mother, they lived back there and worked until they retired, and I can't tell you when that was, but then they traveled by bus across the U.S. because they wanted to see the U.S. And they, and I had a brother that was living in Santa Monica at that time. My brother had gotten his Ph.D. and he was working for, I think it was RAND, Research and Development. Anyway, my parents came out to visit him in Santa Monica, and so I met them there. And let's see... about a year afterwards, my father and mother were, they didn't drive, but they liked to take their walks. And they were taking their -- for their health -- and they were crossing a street in the crosswalk, and they were hit by an automobile. And it's unfortunate because the driver was not drunk, he was a responsible individual. It was just that it was in the evening, and the sunlight was difficult. And he ran them down, and my father was killed at a... well, he died within an hour, I believe. And my mother lasted for a few more days, and then she died as well.

TI: And where was this again? Was this...

JS: In California, Santa Monica.

TI: How tragic.

JS: It was, yeah. It was sad, but... the family, it was tragic for them, too, that, the driver's family. He was, as I said, a responsible individual. I think he worked for RCA or Westinghouse or something like that, and he had two teenage kids. And there was no real violation on his part except that he violated the right of individuals in a crosswalk. But it was a, purely an accident.

TI: How tragic.

JS: Yeah.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.