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TI: So you're at Minidoka doing the teaching. You mentioned for at least a couple years you did this?

HL: Let's see, about a year, little over a year.

TI: Okay, and then you mentioned college.

HL: See, from there I went to Utica, New York, to teach in a Catholic infants' home.

TI: Oh, to teach. Not to go to school, but to teach.

HL: No, I went out to teach. Actually, I wanted to go to Wichita, Wichita, Kansas, but then I decided, no, I'd just as soon go to Utica and teach, work for a year, and then from there I went to Milwaukee and went to college in Milwaukee.

TI: Now, when you left camp, do you recall your parents saying anything to you as you left?

HL: No. That was an interesting thing. My sister wanted to leave and they said, she wanted to go to Chicago and they said, "No, that's too far for you to go." So then a couple months later I said I'm gonna go to Utica, New York, and they said fine. But see, all my life I'd gone places on my own, and so they just thought that I could, I mean, I'd been to Japan and even before then when we used to go to Friday Harbor they'd put me on the ferry and I'd go to Friday Harbor with my sister and I, and we'd get there and we'd walk up to our friend's house, and so I was pretty independent. So when I said I was going to Utica they said, "Fine."

TI: So even though you were a younger sister to Martha, your parents --

HL: I'd been away from home a lot more.

TI: And so they said it was fine, but do you recall any words of wisdom as you went to Utica or anything to...

HL: No. No, it was just, they expected you to do your best and, it was no different from when I went to Japan.

TI: There was another woman I interviewed who also resettled in Utica. She was a, she was with Maryknoll, so I'm not sure, what was her name? I can't remember it, but she told me a story that in Utica there was a hospital.

HL: Uh-huh, it was a veterans' hospital.

TI: Yeah, did you have any experience with that?

HL: Yeah. We, Kimi and, what's her name, I can see her as clear as day, can't remember her name now. We found out that there was this captain from Honolulu that was there, so we went to see him. But we weren't, we weren't at Utica really that long.

TI: So you visited him because he was wounded?

HL: He was wounded.

TI: And was he a family friend, or how did you know him?

HL: No. We just found out that there was a Japanese captain from Honolulu there and so we decided we'd go visit him.

TI: Okay. Any, any memories or thoughts from the hospital or anything that stood out?

HL: No. We just went a couple of times and then about that time I left and went to Milwaukee.

TI: And in Utica, in terms of just being accepted as a Japanese American, was there any issues about that?

HL: Well, we pretty much stayed at the infants' home, and it, let's see, it was, we got there in the fall and then the winters in Utica is not that pleasant, so we pretty much stayed. [Laughs] And then I left in the spring.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.