Densho Digital Archive - Mary Hamano Interview (denshovh-hmary

<Begin Segment 10>

MA: So we're back and I wanted to ask you when you graduated from high school? What year?

MH: I graduated in the winter of 1940.

MA: Was it 1940?

MH: 1940.

MA: And at that point, were you, did you know that you were going to go on to sewing school? Did you already have that set up?

MH: Not really. But yes, in a way, yes. Uh-huh, my folks was, since I did do part-time work there in the neighbor... but they felt that if I'm going to go into something on my own business, that would be the quickest way at that time. I don't know. My parents didn't feel that women should go to college. Now, we feel differently. But, in those days, jobs were not very available even if you went to college. The, a lot of them, I had a hard time finding a job. They ended up being, working in the fruit stands just like my brother did. And you don't need education to do that. They say, "You're just wasting a lot of good money and time and your ability, to not be able to use it." Well, they won't hire, you know. Those days, it was very difficult to get a job, and especially government job, you know, state jobs. Now you can get it easily, but in those days, it was very difficult. And we had a friend, my brother had a friend and he was a, they were Catholics. And he went to the Catholic college and graduated. But he ended up doing the same kind of job my brothers were doing, working in a fruit stand. Well, you know, it felt really bad. You know, you can't find a job.

MA: Do you think it was harder for Japanese Americans to maybe find work? Because of discrimination or...

MH: Yeah, because, there was quite a bit. And you were lucky, luckily the Japanese town had a lot of business. They had insurance company, they had dental, they had doctors. So you trade or do business with them easily or then to go out to the public, because a lot of places wouldn't hire you even if you did have a good education, a good background education. There were very few lawyers. We only knew one at the time, but now there are tons of them out there. But we knew one John Maeda, then there was another, another person that was well-known to be a lawyer. Maybe, maybe a few others, well-known lawyers, too. But there wasn't much to, to go against. Because nobody sued on... they do now, every little thing, you're sued. But the legal thing was, most of us, Issei people couldn't own property. And let alone owning a car was as best as you can do. But owning property or business, it was very difficult. So if you had a child that was over twenty-one, you would use their name to apply for anything and do business. And very few of us were capable of doing that in those days. Especially people that lived on the farm, they had lots of children, but when they were able to say, to get up and for your rights of whatever, it was very difficult because their English was pretty limited, too. I mean their education was, is high school. They were lucky to even get to high school in those days. So I think a lot of that had something to do, too. But nowadays, we have tons of doctors and lawyers and anything you can mention. Engineering, or whatever. We're really up there.

MA: Were your parents involved in like the Issei community, or community groups that were there for the Isseis?

MH: The way, they had different, if you come from the village, that certain village, they called kenjinkais or gunjinkais, they belong to that. And the gunjinkais are, are the ones that your closest kinfolks, your village people. And kenjinkai is a prefecture, like the state, like we call state, and the gunjinkais are the county. People that live in that surrounding. And we must have had about three hundred with kids included. When we have picnic, that was the time that we meet everybody. Or, we didn't have babysitters, we didn't have places where you could say like a babysitting place. Everybody took their kids wherever it was, whether there was a funeral, a wedding, or some kind of party. The kids all came with them, no matter what. Because there's nobody to look after them, so they take their kids with them. So that's the only time we meet everybody. And we were friends, family friends all the way through 'til they leave home, and we're still friends, you know. And fortunately, when I moved here, I found three families that came originally from California. And we, so when we get together, we reminisce the times that we grew up. Like those times when we went to the picnics or the parties or whatever. So that's the only time that you can go back to your childhood days, I call it. And we all grew up very rough in those days. 'Cause compared to what it is, we wonder how we managed with so little money we had. But you survived, we all survived. We survived the war, too, which was the most difficult one.