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TI: So I'm now going to shift more towards your family. So your mom and dad, they met at Topaz.

DT: Right.

TI: And they got married shortly after. So pick up the story from there. Where did they go after they got married?

DT: Well, let's see. There's a lot of things sort of bouncing around in my head, so I'm just gonna throw 'em out there before I forget them. But even before they got married -- so after my father made arrangements to have the hotel taken care of, and the whole family was carted away also to Tanforan, where they ultimately ended up in Topaz, my father was finishing up his pharmacy degree at Cal. And he finished, and he then was sent from Tanforan, then to Topaz, and then he gets his, he got his degree while he was in Topaz. So it's a mailing tube that I still keep, and on the outside of the tube is the Topaz, Utah, and his barracks number, and it's to a concentration camp. And on the inside, the contents, is his wrapped up diploma. And I think it's such a fitting little piece of memorabilia, 'cause it was like it just symbolized their whole life. I mean, on the one hand, inside the tube was his, the promise of America in terms of the doors of opportunity, he's got a degree from Cal. And then it's encircled and constrained by this mailing tube, which is the reality of the internment camp. And I kind of keep that just, just a reminder as to how far we've gotten.

And so he gets his degree in an internment camp. And in the meantime, their whole world has been turned upside down. And, of course, he's young and still full of hope and optimism, and he falls in love and meets my mother. And because it's wartime and people don't know what's gonna happen, I think there was a real sense of urgency, that everything has to happen like right now. And so they got married, as did other people, and ultimately he was drafted. And he spent the war in Cushing Hospital in Massachusetts, because he had had a pharmacy degree in medical, pharmaceutical background. He was put there, and my mother, in the meantime, had been able to get a job as a domestic in Massachusetts, in Framingham, and so she was able to more or less join him there, and I think they stayed there for the duration of the war. And there was some issue as to whether my father was gonna be sent overseas, and there's a story about whether he was on a list to go overseas and to Europe, and there was a doctor at the hospital, at Cushing, who decided, well, he was more valuable to him there, so he did not, he did not go into combat, I guess. But just one of those stories of people, the movement of people during time of war.

TI: And eventually they got back to Oakland?

DT: Yeah. Eventually, my grandmother remained for the duration of the war in Topaz, because she couldn't work, couldn't speak English. Her kids were able to get out after the first or second year. Of course, no one could return to the West Coast, that was an excluded zone. And eventually my mother and father made their way back to San Francisco, as did the rest of the family, and then re-started up the Fuji Hotel. And thereafter, my father, I think he worked at a couple of private pharmacies, drugstore-like settings, and then he ultimately got a job with the government like a lot of minorities and Japanese Americans in particular, working for the Veterans Administration as a pharmacist, civil servant. And he did that until he retired.

TI: And so when did they move from San Francisco to Oakland?

DT: So they moved, I think, right after I was born. So that was in '51, I was born. And they moved into, it was a nice neighborhood, small house. And the story that they told was that -- to me -- was that the real estate broker who sold them their house ultimately was fired because he had sold the house to a Japanese American. And then there were a group of neighbors who came knocking on the door, basically saying, "You're not welcome in this neighborhood." This was because it was a "white neighborhood." And my father, of course, was angry about it, but he said, "Make me an offer," meaning, "You come up with the money. And if you want to get me out of here, buy me out." And they never did. And so I lived there, and fortunate enough to live in one house until I left for college. And I had, I was oblivious to any of that because the, my neighbors and the kids in the neighborhood, I got along with really well.

TI: What neighborhood was this in Oakland?

DT: This is off Lakeshore Avenue, not too far from Lake Merritt. And I had a wonderful childhood. And in those days, you could work in a factory and you could own a house. And that's a reality that doesn't exist anymore with the cost of real estate and everything else. But it was, my father worked two jobs, he worked in the Veterans Administration during the day from eight 'til five-thirty, he'd come home, eat a sandwich, and then he'd go off to his second job which was at Kaiser Hospital pharmacy, and he worked there 'til eight-thirty or nine at night. And so I basically saw him when I was kid at nine o'clock at night, and I wouldn't talk to him until after he had his two martinis. [Laughs] 'Cause he'd be pretty fried by the time I got home. But he was very, both my parents were very loving parents, and to me, that was normal. So, I guess the translation is that my working hours are kind of similar, but I don't think anything of it, 'cause it's kind of like I grew up with that.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.