<Begin Segment 24>

TI: And what year did you graduate from UW?

AA: 1948.

TI: Okay, so now you're a veteran, you're a college graduate, what did you do next?

AA: Couldn't get a job, nobody would hire me.

TI: So explain this to me. Now this is after the war, and you're a veteran and a college graduate, and still you had difficulties getting a job?

AA: Yes, I was majoring in marketing, and I tried to get a job with big department stores like the Bon Marche, Frederick & Nelson, and Sears Roebuck. And I remember one day going to the employment office at Sears and they wouldn't give me a form, application form and I sat down there about three days. I finally got tired of waiting, and I had mentioned to my brother-in-law, Ted Nishimura, that, the problem I was having. And he says, "Oh," says, "I know Doc Shinbo, he's a friend of, friend of the manager at Sears Roebuck." And so he talked to Doc Shinbo and says, "Oh, tell him to go down to his office and don't talk to the personnel people." So I went down there and says, told the secretary I'm looking for a job. So she was very pleasant and says, "Oh, he's busy right now. Can you wait fifteen minutes?" And I said, "I can, I can wait hours. I can wait days." Says, "I've been sitting in that unemployment office, you know, for a couple of days." And she said, "Oh, that's too bad." She started asking me various questions and she says, "Have you had any experience on a yacht?" I thought that was kind of a peculiar question to ask, and I said, "Yeah, I've worked on a yacht before." She said, "Who did you work for?" and I says, "I worked for the Griffith family on the Sujiya." And she says, "Oh, yes, we're familiar, we're friends of the Griffiths." And I remember at the Seattle Yacht Club when I was working there, that I used to see this fifty-some foot yacht parked about a couple of slips away, and it was, belonged to Stanley Donnoll, who was the manager of Sears Roebuck. And she says, "Oh, I think Mr. Donnoll will be pleased to see you." So we got to the dock and then I told her, you know, my background, and says, "I'm trying to get a job in the store." "Oh, you're not looking for a job on Mr. Donnoll's yacht?" I said, "No, that's the last job I want." [Laughs] And she said, "Oh, Mr. Donnoll doesn't hire, do any hiring for the store." She said, "You gotta go through personnel," and so she ushered me out the door.

And I kept on pounding the pavement for six months, I couldn't, couldn't get a job. Finally, the Veterans Administration started passing out refunds on the dividends, and the reason that there were dividends was that the GI insurance premium was based on the American Experience Table, but the GIs that went into service were very healthy, they had no medical problems. And so normally, they would be prime subjects, but those deaths were paid, paid by the General Treasury of the United States, and not out of the premium funds, so they had a surplus, and so they were passing out dividends. And so there were openings, so I got, I got an interview, and they were very glad to have me aboard 'cause I had worked for them all these years. And they had, they had classes to bring, bring all the people that they got off the streets up to date on (procedures to calculate refunds). They had these lectures for two weeks, the school. And they had these people giving the lectures had never worked on, in insurance before. But they, they were giving the lectures, and a couple of times they slipped up and made some incorrect statements, and I'd raise my hand and I says, "I don't think that's the way it was," and I'd explain to them. And this guys says, hey, he went up to the boss, was Ms. Peterson, that used to be my boss. She was about a third or second level supervisor in the central office. And he says, "This guy, he tells me that this isn't the way it was." She said, "Oh, yes," she said, "you listen to him. He knows what he's talking about." Because I worked as a, I was working as an auditor for them, and so I got along fine.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.