<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Let me, I want to ask, so when you came back... well, I guess your dad was involved with the Japanese community so let's... I'm going to really... no, let's continue with your story so from San Diego then you went to San Lorenzo, then you came back to southern California, so where did you graduate from high school?

RO: San Lorenzo.

TI: San Lorenzo, so in San Lorenzo.

RO: We were there in San Lorenzo for eight years. So I graduated from San Lorenzo grammar school and then went to San Lorenzo High.

TI: And so it was after you graduated then you came back to Pasadena, remember that area?

RO: Right.

TI: That was after high school?

RO: After high school and I went down there to go to college, that was my dream of going to college down in southern California. And I moved down there with a friend of mine and we were living in this attic apartment behind the Pasadena... at that time it was called the Pasadena Nazarene College but today it's called the Pasadena College, I think. Anyway, I went down there to go to college and during the summer I moved down there with my friend. And a month or so after I had moved down there I had a visit from my father and mother, they had driven down. And at first I thought, hmm, something is up here. Anyway, my father asked me to drop out of college, to not go to school, that he needed my help. And he needed me to help pay for the second mortgage of a house that he wanted to buy. It was like, this is so unfair. But when your parents ask you, I said, okay.

TI: And when your father asked, was your mother also asking you to do it, too, they came down together.

RO: They came down together. She didn't do much of the talking, he did. And so we went house hunting and I dropped my idea of going to school, going at least to day school. And we started to look for housing. And behind the Nazarene College, or the college there, there was a house for sales. So with our agent we went over there and asked how much and, "Are you interested in selling it to us?" And she said, "I won't sell to a Jap family." And I was like, okay, well, that was the first time I think after the war that I actually had someone just come right out front and say, "No, I'm not going to sell you anything." So the minister of the Pasadena Nazarene Church, which was a big church there on Washington Boulevard, heard about it and so there was another house for sale near Washington Boulevard, it was owned by a missionary who was out of town a lot. So the house was pretty dilapidated, the lawn was unkempt and the yard was pretty, in bad shape compared to all the other homes in that area with neatly trimmed lawns and everything. So that house, the missionary's house was for sale and the minister of the Nazarene Church, Reverend Taylor, heard that we were looking at that house. So he went door to door to every single house on that block and said, "There's a Japanese American family who is interested in buying that house and you are going to say, 'Yes.'" I mean, he went to every house to make sure that they would not kick us out or refuse to have us there. And thanks to Reverend Taylor we were able to buy that house.

TI: And when did you find that out? Probably you didn't know initially that he --

RO: I didn't know that initially until, you know, I wish I could remember when it was I found out. I can't remember but we got married, my first husband and I got married in his church. So maybe somewhere along the line somebody told me that that was what Reverend Taylor did. And for years later I was thinking, "That took a lot of courage," especially not too long after the war. And I'm forever grateful to him for doing what he did 'cause it allowed my father to come down and my mother to have access to the City of Hope. And the house was tiny, it was... the bedrooms were even smaller than this room, my bedroom anyway. But we moved in, my father fixed up the yard, planted nice lawn and we all helped take care of it. And we painted the house and fixed everything up so it that it looked like the rest of the house on the block. And so I went down to Pasadena to go to college and I had registered at the Pasadena City College to make up a few courses and I found a job at a bookstore, at a book depository and had started working to help my father with his second mortgage. And anyway, I worked for a while and then it turned out, the whole story I told you about my mother. So that house has a lot of memories, mainly because my mother actually died in that house. And I value all the memories, of course, someone else has the house now but that house held a lot of memories for me, good memories. Even if was sad to lose my mother, the time I was able to spend with her was great. She's my hero, heroine.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.