<Begin Segment 25>

MN: Now, you returned in May 1945, and you and Jim married...

TI: In July.

MN: Now, how did you pick that date?

TI: Well, it was a, it was his two-week furlough, so we had to pick a date in that two-week time. And so it was a Saturday and it fell on the fourteenth. Little did we know it was Bastille Day in France. [Laughs] So anyway, people say, "You got married on Bastille Day?" I said, "Yeah, we didn't know it was Bastille Day." So anyway...

MN: Now, the war is still going on. Were you able to invite friends from camp to the wedding?

TI: No. There was hardly anybody back except my neighbor down the street, and she was my, Miyo Yamashita Abe was my maid of honor, and I had been friends with her since childhood, four years old. And June, her sister, played the piano for us. And she's the one that stayed with us until she could get her house vacated and call her family back. And we had one neighbor, Mrs. Corsini, she was an Italian neighbor, and that was it.

MN: And who was Jim's best man?

TI: His brother-in-law who had gone to Chicago to live. And he worked for Ryerson Steel in Chicago, and he was so afraid he would lose his job, that he took one day off to get here to Los Angeles, and then it was Saturday, and we got married, and he went to the dinner with us after the wedding, and then Jim had to take him down to the train station and he went down to Chicago.

MN: Now, how did you prepare for the wedding?

TI: Well, there wasn't much to prepare for. The only thing we did was... poor Jim. He was the driver, and he went after the wedding cake, and he took us to the Douglas's home where we had our wedding, and he took Frank down to the train station. And then we had our dinner down in the Wilshire district, and then he says he was so busy, he doesn't even remember the ceremony. [Laughs] Yeah. It was fun.

MN: Now, what did you do for a wedding dress?

TI: Oh, well, I bought a white, short cocktail dress and a little hat, and I was married. And fortunately Dr. Douglas, our host, was an ordained Methodist minister, so he officiated. We were married in their home.

MN: And just so I know the Douglas's are a big part of your family, can you tell us again who Dr. and Mrs. Douglas were?

TI: Oh. Dr., Mrs. Douglas especially, the woman who was instrumental in getting my mother to come from Japan. She belonged to the Methodist Missionary Society, Women's Missionary Society that sent my mother the fare to come to the United States. And so she was their mentor throughout her stay in the United States.

MN: Now, you talk about the first dinner that you have as a "wedding breakfast"?

TI: Yeah, it's always called a breakfast because, I don't know why, it's a tradition, but it's, ours was actually a dinner. [Laughs]

MN: And you had it at the Nikobob restaurant in Wilshire? How did you pick that restaurant?

TI: I don't know. I guess it was close enough by, yeah.

MN: Where did you have your honeymoon?

TI: Well, we went to Chicago by train, and in Chicago, Jim's family, most of Jim's family was there in Chicago. So they gave us a second wedding reception, and they had a very nice dinner for us. And they also paid for our stay at the hotel, Stevenson's Hotel in Chicago, yeah. And then we went on to Fort Snelling.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.