<Begin Segment 8>

MA: So where did you go after then leaving Oak Ridge?

KB: Oak Ridge? I was offered a job in the Bay Area, in California, so I decided that I would go, that we would go there. So this was in East Bay at a veterans hospital in a town called Martinez. And it's maybe like thirty miles from San Francisco.

MA: And what year was this, when you moved?

KB: This was in 1964.

MA: So what was that like, going, I mean, from the deep South to then the Bay Area? What was, what were your impressions of San Francisco?

KB: It was nice. [Laughs] Yeah, it was very nice, I would say.

MA: And was there, where you were, in Martinez, was there a large Japanese American community? Or what was the ethnic population like?

KB: Martinez had, it was not very Asian. The Asian population was more in Oakland, Berkeley, and of course San Francisco and then San Jose. So the east side didn't have, especially further east of the bay, didn't have that many Japanese. There were Japanese, but not overwhelmingly Japanese. We lived, we lived north of Berkeley, we lived, tried to have our home closer to the bay, because as you got to the interior, it was very hot. It was more like this area, where you go into Yakima or south of -- I'm sorry, east of the mountains where it would be really hot. So it was a similar situation in the Bay Area. So our home was closer to the water, and it was an easy drive for me to go to Martinez.

MA: So at that point in the '60s in the Bay Area, what were the race relations like at that point? Was there stuff going on that you witnessed, or any type of activism?

KB: I'm sure there was some activism, but I don't remember that it was, there was anything really outstanding.

MA: And you were in California for how many years?

KB: Thirty years. [Laughs]

MA: So you were in, so you basically made that your permanent home?

KB: I suppose, right, uh-huh. I have to, I have to add, however, that we had bought this property up here back in the '60s. It was, my husband likes the water, and of course, he was brought up in Istanbul where there was lots of water, and he decided that he wanted a place where he could go swimming. So we drove around the Seattle area and found this little cabin, log cabin on the Sammamish Plateau, it was just called the Plateau in those days. So we -- oh, and it was on a little lake, it's called Beaver Lake, and we bought this property. And at time, some of the people said, "What do you think you're gonna do, swim in this area? There probably would be four or five days of hot weather enough for you to go swimming in a lake." Well, he swims in a cold lake, it doesn't matter whether it's warm or cold. But anyway, we acquired this property, and we kept it all these years. So when we retired, we decided we'll build a house there, and that's what we did. It took us about a year, I think, we traveled back and forth to see what was going on, and we had this house built to replace the log cabin, and it's right on the lake. We were living... now, our house is small compared to all these mansions that are going up there. It's just developed.

MA: I'm sure... the Sammamish Plateau has changed a lot.

KB: It's just, it's just so different.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.