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BK: And then you were still continuing to work, you said.

MH: Oh, yeah. When we got married in December of '47 and I wanted to get pregnant right away, and I never could. So, we had a lot of tests made and we couldn't, so in '49 we adopted a little girl. She was nine months old, and she was born in July, so I guess we got her in '50.

BK: Was that a difficult decision for you and your husband to make?

MH: For us it wasn't. We knew that if we didn't have any children, we would adopt. The only problem we had was Ossie's mother was a very staunch Buddhist, very Japanese. She associates with nothing but Japanese, she spoke nothing but Japanese. And we were afraid at that time, if we took a ainoko that she wouldn't really accept it.

BK: And ainoko being a mixed child.

MH: Yes, uh-huh. And so we told the lady, and we told the reason, I said, "For us, we didn't care what we got." We met Yoshi Kanemori, she had adopted Scott just before we did. And so I went to her and asked her how she did it. And she told us, and so we did the same thing. And then we got Beverly. In fact, Beverly was here waiting to be adopted. She'd had an eye that they called a roaming eye, but it adjusted itself, so they had kept her for nine months in a foster home. And so we picked her up, and then, of course, my family had a big party for us. And she sat there, the poor kid, and just looked at us, I don't think she had ever seen a Japanese before. And she just kinda looked at us, it was really kinda sad. She didn't cry, she didn't smile, but she took to her father so that was good. But she just sat there and looked at us, and we figured that that was the reason.

BK: Was the process a difficult process, in terms of the adoption at that time, this is 1949?

MH: No, it wasn't, because we only lived in a one-bedroom apartment and they, of course, came and checked us out. And they were real, very different than now. They came a couple times, and then after that we moved to a house with her own bedroom, we rented. But at that time they allowed us to adopt her. And we had her, I guess it was six months before we got the legal papers. But we didn't have any problems. We were fortunate.

BK: Right.

MH: But I still worked. I worked and then I found a job at night. So I stayed home maybe half a year, eight months, to get her used to us. And then, I had -- Seattle Quilting had a night shift for sewing, and I had heard about it. So Ossie would come home early, or I would take a bus. My niece stayed with us that time for a little while, my Mom and Dad. And then I went to work, and then in the evening -- I didn't drive then -- and then Ossie would pick me up. Beverly and Ossie would come and pick me up and take me home.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.