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TI: Well, so tell me, how did you propose to her?

LH: I don't think it's any different than most people. But the letter sort of was the prelude and you had a pretty good idea she was going to say, "Yes." So I asked her, "Will you marry me?" and she said, "Yes." It was as simple as that.

TI: And at what point, from those early dates, the letter writing, when did it become clear in your mind that she was the one?

LH: Well, I had a pretty strong feeling after the three dates. But then after the exchange of letters and seeing more into her heart and soul, and her ability to express herself, I guess it's like some movie called "Love Letters" or something like that, you know. Woman falls in love with a fellow that writes her from the war front, but it's not really him, it's his friend who's writing the letters. [Laughs]

TI: But in this case, it was really, it was really, after those first dates, it was the writing back and forth that you really got a better sense of who she was.

LH: Absolutely.

TI: And you knew that this was...

LH: And then when I got back in November, and seeing her a few more times, and it was obvious, this is the right person. And I was thirty, I was old enough, I'd been around the bend. She was thirty-three, she had been around the bend, we were already adults; we knew what we wanted in life. And so I went back to Washington and got my assignment changed. Canceled that second year in Korea and got myself reassigned to Tokyo. Now, a lot of that is not easy unless you have friends, and friends who know your abilities and know that you're not trying to, you know, get out of a hardship post, which Korea was. I was there for a year, and I'd been in and out of there during the war, and they knew I could do a good job in Tokyo. So there was no real problem there. And as Maynard said, I came back and we got married.

TI: Well, before that, though, you had a trip through Seattle.

LH: Oh, yes, because my parents and siblings were in Seattle.

TI: So at that point, did you tell your, your parents and siblings that you were...

LH: Well, my father had just died the year before, and I told my mother and my brothers. And as Maynard had told you earlier, my sister, whose husband was also with the Department in Tokyo, she initially had trepidations, but not serious ones. She immediately, or soon thereafter, came on board. And John Ishii was on board from the very beginning. And so when I went through Seattle, her brother was getting married, I met him, he liked me, I was his best man.

TI: So before you do that, that strikes me as interesting, that he made you his best man for his wedding.

LH: Yes. Well, because he knew I was gonna marry his sister, and he was up there, he was a naval academy graduate but in the Air Force getting his master's degree at the University of Washington. But obviously didn't have any close friends, family, and he felt that I would be the right one. So I agreed, and the father came up -- the mother was ill -- father came up and the wedding took place. And then he and I flew back down to Sonoma.

TI: So I want to ask, when you first met Maynard's father, how was that for you? Because her father was a prominent man --

LH: Oh, yeah.

TI: -- and were you nervous about that?

LH: Well, yes and no. By that time, I had met enough important men in the world that, like the old poem, "To deal with fools and kings," you know. And certainly you may be a little uneasy because you're meeting the father of the woman you love, the one you're going to marry, plus, he had been a prominent military officer during World War II. But he put me at ease very quickly. He was a matter-of-fact kind of guy, and in his heart of hearts, a very good -- I may not say tender -- but a very... well, I would. A tender man, because I saw that later when I saw him dealing with Maynard's younger sister, who was, had physical problems. And he was the most gentle, sweetest man I'd ever seen in my life, the way he treated his daughter, a cerebral paralytic who was damaged when she was born, in the naval hospital. And so when we flew down here, then I met the mother, and the mother wouldn't introduce me around as Maynard's fiance, and that hurt me a little. But I'd been around enough grande dames and older Caucasian that had prejudice, or some prejudice, and I knew it would work itself out. And it did; eventually I became her favorite son-in-law.

TI: So was it, was there ever any direct discussions about you being Japanese American or was it all... yeah, was that ever discussed?

LH: No, I really don't believe there was. I can't recollect that there was. They accepted me as an American even though they knew, we may have discussed my Japanese ancestry because of my parents. And explaining to them my background, you know, that I'd been in one of the camps during the war and then joined the Army, U.S. Army before I became a diplomat. But it wasn't one of those things where we went into it in great detail and spent three nights talking about.

TI: Well, I'm curious, when your in-laws and Maynard found out about the camps -- or did they know about the camps? How much did they know?

LH: Well, Maynard knew very little if anything. Her older sister did, not the one that lives here, Ann, her half-sister. And the parents knew. Maynard's parents knew about what had happened, and were interested in the fact that I'd been one of them that had been in the camp. But as far as I recollect, they didn't make a big deal out of it, nor did I. I generally underplay it with people anyway.

TI: So you returned to Japan, and then...

LH: Then we got married there.

TI: And tell me about the ceremony, the religious ceremony. What was that like?

LH: Yes. Well, first we got married on January 6, (1959), in the embassy legally, and then registered in the Japanese ward office, legally. And then on January 15th, we had an Episcopalian church ceremony. That was on January 15th. And as I said, my older sister and her husband were living in Tokyo. They held a small reception for us after the wedding.

TI: And what's the reaction at your place of work, at the embassy? Are people pretty excited that you're married, or does this change your career path in any way, going from single to being married?

LH: Yes, I would say, overall, it didn't change my career path. But I was still working many nights, many weekends, no consideration was given just because you got married. Going to have a year of only three or five days a week? None of that kind of stuff. I remember one man, actually, he was a counselor in the embassy, quite high up, and he had been a colonel in the military during the war. And he half-jokingly said to me, "Lucius, what do you call your father-in-law? Sir, Admiral, Dad, or what?" [Laughs]

TI: And what did you call your father-in-law?

LH: Well, a variety of things. It depended on the circumstances. We refer to him as Dad, I may have called him Admiral... I picked up something from, later, from one of the, his other son-in-laws, who called him "Skipper." Whereas Maynard's mother said, "Please call me Mother or Mom, but don't call me Mother Cooke." So I just called her Mother.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.