<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So you and Shi get married at the hostel, and then what do you do next?

MN: He went on a bus and became a gardener, used the residents' tools, cut their lawn and trimmed whatever, he never gardened in his life, he was a farmer before the war.

TI: So say that one more -- he took the bus, so he didn't have a truck?

MN: We had no car, we didn't have a car. So I used to take a bus and go housework and take different places, and do their, either ironing or washing or cleaning little house or taking care of the little kids. And we actually eventually went to live in a home together, he as a gardener, I as a housekeeper, and took care of the little boy. But I was not a good enough cook for her. She said, "You can't even bake a pie." I couldn't. I knew how to do things like cook different stews and things like that, but she said, "We want desserts and you don't know how," so we were laid off. And so we eventually (...) joined his father and mother and the rest of the family in Buena Park. That's when I quit housekeeping. And Shi, my husband, went to work as a farmer with my brother-in-law. And then eventually he started his own little business.

TI: But I wanted to go back to make sure I understood. There was, when you first started in Pasadena, as a gardener, he didn't have a car or anything, so he would take the bus. And because you were on a bus, you can't bring a lawnmower or something.

MN: No, no.

TI: So he would just use the person's...

MN: The customer's things, their lawnmowers and their clippers and all that. And he would have to come home on the bus stinky and dirty. And that's what he did every day. And eventually, he was able to buy a car by borrowing money from the Filipino people who used to work for him in Carson. It used to be called Keystone, but after the war, they called it Carson. And the Filipino workers that kept the farm going, it was not theirs. they kept the equipment and everything for them. But he borrowed five hundred dollars from them, bought a little car, and he went gardening with that. And the Filipino people eventually got paid back and then they went back to the Philippines. That's the kind of people that worked for him.

TI: Yeah. Were there other acts of kindness that you can recall during this, kind of these years right after Manzanar?

MN: Well, during the camp, there was a lady who was called Mrs. McFarland, who lived in Wilmington. That's where my husband went to high school. And she loved the Japanese people. She just did everything for them before and during the war. And she used to come in a car to visit Shi's family and bring them things that we could not get, I mean, they could not get. I didn't know her at that time. And that's the kindness that they were showing him when he was in Manzanar. And Dr. Emerson, who was the professor, used to bring things for -- my brother's, well, our family.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.