<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So eventually the war ends, or what happened? Why did, or how did you leave Minidoka?

ST: Okay. We knew that it was going to be difficult for us, because my father was, he was getting, he was past sixty-five at this time, he would not be employable. And my sister would be the only one working, I would be in school. So, and my father did not want to go east, you could always leave if you went east. And so apparently at this time, the WRA from the Portland office sent a couple people to camp to interview people who wanted to go to Portland or that area. So my sister went and interviewed, and they gave her, she said they gave her a typing test to see if she could transcribe her shorthand, to see if she's qualified to be a secretary. And she was, so in order for you to go out, you had to have a job at the other end. So there was a group, the National Association of Christians and Jews, and they were sort of a partner of trying to be a transition group to find jobs for people who went out. So what they did was they hired, my sister went to work for them. So she left before we did, probably right just before the end of the war. So that was in the early part of the summer of '45. And she got a job for them working in the office doing things, it was a temp job. And then the WRA had a warehouse there. They had a warehouse where all the confiscated contraband was, that meant the shortwave radios and the cameras and all that sort of thing, where you were supposed to leave your things before you left for camp. And so they used that as a temporary place to hire people. So when that person found another job, they would hire somebody who had probably been working for the National Association of Christians and Jews. So that's what happened; my sister worked for a few, a short time for the National Association of Christians and Jews, and then when the opening came at the warehouse, she moved over there to work. And she also had a part-time job on Saturday, on Saturday morning for a Methodist church. And the minister had her typing stencils for the Sunday program. And so it was all kind of the church, church-related. In fact, the church probably was the source of most of the help that I think people got. But the WRA was very nice, and she worked there, and she signed, when we finally had a place to go to, she signed our stuff out there. So I have a inventory of what we picked up. And then she, they would send her out for jobs. The WRA would send her out for jobs, to interview. And there was an opening for a job at Lewis and Clark College, which was, had just moved from Albany, Oregon, to the southwest hills of -- southeast hills, I guess it is -- of Portland. And it was near Lake Oswego. And so she went to interview there after some other interviews, and she hired on there. And she worked there for all the rest of the time until she was married. It was a very loving environment.

TI: So it was actually your sister was kind of the trailblazer that got established back in Portland.

ST: Yes. You know, because if she hadn't gone out and got a job, see, we couldn't follow. We couldn't follow. But we did, they, towards the end, I think they were trying to help us more. Because we were probably one of the last groups to leave. There were still people there when we left, but there weren't a whole lot. The blocks were becoming empty. And I remember what we did was we all used to order clothes from, I think from Montgomery Ward. Montgomery Ward had a very good mail order catalog, and they took very good care of our orders. So we ordered things to, for curtains and clothing, we had a clothing allowance assigned to us, so we could buy clothes from the Montgomery Ward catalog. And before we left, I had saved up my clothing allowances and I had pay from my job. I earned sixteen dollars a month. And then there was, what they called a community offering. And there were some that went around and collected something like fifty cents a house or something, and they divided it up. And the people who worked in the hospital got us a little bit extra.

TI: Now, why -- I haven't heard about this.

ST: Oh, really?

TI: So why, why did they do this? Just that they felt that the hospital people needed more money than they were getting?

ST: First, they felt that it was, I guess, that they deserved more, I don't know. I don't know who started this. I think it was principally for the doctors, because we had Japanese doctors, and of course the Japanese doctors were very good. They were the surgeons and the specialists, and the dentists. And so in order to give them something, they thought we should collect. And then I guess the doctors, they didn't feel that they should be the only ones, so then I think we got something, too. We didn't get as much as they did, but I remember we got, I think we got three dollars or something a month, and they got a little more. It was a way of saying thank you, because, you know, of course, their pay was, I think they got nineteen dollars a month.

TI: Okay. So, but you're talking about, so now you have this little...

ST: Stash.

TI: Money stash.

ST: Yes. So then we ordered, we ordered clothes from Montgomery ward, these were our "going out" clothes, you know, the ones we were going to go back to Portland with. And at that time, also, you could get passes to Twin Falls. This is all before my sister left. We could get passes to go into Twin Falls, so we went into Twin Falls, and I bought a hat because at that time you always bought, you always had a hat. And I bought gloves, because you always wore gloves. And I bought shoes. And shoes at that time, of course, you could not buy leather shoes because that required coupons. But they had quite a lot of fabric shoes that were very nice. And so I bought a fabric pair of shoes, and that was my going out of camp outfit.

TI: Okay. So you and your father follow your sister, you returned to the Portland area. And what did your father do?

ST: He didn't do anything. He couldn't. I mean, there was just, we told him, "We'll make it," and my sister earned enough so that we could make it. And the other thing was, they had what they called "old age assistance." They made, they came to the unit in camp and insisted that Dad sign up for this, because they said, "Everybody should have some money." And so they said the State of Oregon would be paying this in the county or something like that. And so that would give him something every month. And so he didn't want it, because he said, "That's welfare." And they said, "Don't look at it that way," you know. "Take it, because you deserve it." And so he did, and so he had that. So we said, "Well, there's no use working," because what could he do? He had arthritis, he had rheumatism, his eyesight was not good, all this. And there was just no reason for him to work. What could he do?

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.