<Begin Segment 9>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

SP: So your family was about one of twenty families who came back to Bellevue postwar.

SA: No, it was (twelve of sixty prewar families who returned to Bellevue).

SP: One of sixty families.

SA: Pre-war, there were sixty (...) Japanese American families. And we were one of (the twelve families) to return.

SP: One of twelve, okay. Okay. So what kind of conditions did you return to? What was your house like? You mentioned that there had been people living in it.

SA: Yeah, they were what you call white trash. And they would not move out of the house. And we didn't get any rent money, they couldn't pay. (...) We were late in coming back, (returning) January (...) 20th.

SP: So you came back in the dead of winter pretty much.

SA: Dead of winter, and school had already started. (...) Mitsuko Hashiguchi's (family), who's a former Takeshita, (...) had returned months earlier. And they took us in, our whole family. (They were nice) to take us in. Because our house was unlivable. They had chickens running through the house. And you don't know what else. Our roof was leaking, it was (in terrible condition). And the land was fallow for all those years, because no one wanted to farm. (People) could make better money working at the Kirkland shipyard, which is now Carillon Point.

SP: And what happened to the bathhouse that your grandfather built?

SA: Oh, we still used it. Yeah, we still, we did have the bathhouse. And we still used it, even after the war. But we stayed with the (Hashiguchis), but we couldn't all stay there (too long), so I found a job with an American family by the name of Gavins and I went to work as a live-in nanny. So the rest of my high school years was as a live-in nanny and report to work right after school. So I couldn't participate in any of the school activities, just went to work (after school).

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.