<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So when the war ended, how did that change things?

HM: Boy, did I quit my job right away.

TI: [Laughs] Why is that?

HM: I didn't want the black badge. I should've kept the black badge. I don't know what I did with it, but I think we had to turn it in. But when they said the war is over I quit. [Laughs] I wanted to get away from all that. I wanted to be free. I didn't want to be tied up.

TI: And the reason you kept the job during the war was you needed the money?

HM: Well, our job was frozen. You couldn't quit.

TI: I'm sorry, it was frozen so that you couldn't quit?

HM: Yeah, we couldn't quit. Jobs were frozen that time. Maybe it was a good thing. I would've jumped from one job to the other.

TI: But -- go ahead.

KN: What other instances of martial law? Because there was freezing of jobs that you experienced --

HM: Yeah, that's why --

KN: Do you remember any of the blackouts or other things that happened?

HM: Yeah, the blackouts, I think we, as our family we took it as a stride. We didn't worry about blackout because Dad had everything. They really took good care of us, so we didn't have, we didn't worry about those things. So you can see my parents really protected us, so we didn't think... no, no, no, we didn't, I thought, I don't, so I don't... of course, it was uncomfortable. We had to take a bath while the sun was up and all that, but still then we had food to eat and all that, so those are the things, the least things I worried about.

KN: What about your sisters or other family members? Were they going to school still, or did they work?

HM: So three of us went to different schools. I finished Waipahu High School and Amy went to Farrington and my youngest sister went to Leilehua, so we were, temporarily I stayed with a family in Waipahu because I wanted to finish high school. And Amy wanted to go to Farrington, so Miyeko, the youngest, was the baby, so she hung around home, so she went to Leilehua. So three of us graduated different high schools.

KN: What kind of jobs did you look for after the war? Since you wanted to leave as soon as possible since you didn't like the black badge, what kind of jobs did you do afterwards?

HM: Then I worked for Kodak Hawaii, and at that time there were still Marines at the Kodak Hawaii building. I don't know what they were doing, but that's the least thing that I worried about, but I was a stock clerk.

TI: That reminds me, you said there was a story about the camera. Earlier you mentioned how the soldiers didn't take the camera and you said there was a story you were gonna tell us later.

HM: Oh yes, I don't know what happened to the camera. I think that's the least thing on my mother's mind. So I have no picture of the house, no picture of improvement, but it's on, you cannot erase that from my mind. I can still see the house and the improvement was being done, and I don't know what else my mom had in the camera, but that's the saddest thing, that I don't know what happened to the camera.

TI: So at some point, maybe when someone came through the house, they --

HM: Yeah, they could have picked it up, because people those days, people didn't have cameras, so we had luxury at home. My dad really loved my mother. You used to see the things that he used to buy her, Japanese records -- remember the record player? My dad bought a lot of things for my mom, I remember. He really loved my mother.

TI: Kelli, is there anything else around the wartime, 'cause I was gonna, I want to kind of move to the redress time and to understand that.

HM: Okay.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.