<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So Ted, we're back and we're just talking about leaving Minidoka and how you were one of the last families to leave. So going back to Northwest, where did you go after Minidoka?

TK: We went to Seattle, and the government gave us a train ticket and twenty-five dollars each, and that didn't last very long.

TI: And where did you stay that first night, or where did you live?

TK: Where did we go? I don't remember. All I remember is that we ended up in the Renton, I don't know, federal housing, and I think we stayed there until end of the school year. And since my father wasn't able to work my mother was doing domestic, and she was working at different places every day. And then she finally got a job at a doctor's home, and then the doctor had a summer home on Whidbey Island and they asked if we wanted to help, go to, because they had a second home there, and they asked us if we want to go there and then to more or less watch that summer home and my mother could go back and forth and do, work in Seattle and go back and forth. And so we went there.

TI: So it sounds like this doctor's family really helped out by letting you live at their summer home?

TK: At the summer home, except one thing wrong is that I think after we got there, I think my mother could take quite a bit, but I think the doctor's wife was a little bit too rough on her and she had a rough time, but she stayed on the job until the end of the school year. And then we moved back to Seattle.

TI: Okay, so yeah, it sounds like she had to work too hard for this.

TK: She had to work, yeah.

TI: So then you returned to Seattle, and then what, so then you continued school in Seattle?

TK: Yeah, and I spent my senior year at Garfield High School and I graduated there.

TI: Now how was it for you, because you had to keep moving from school to school to school? I mean, how was that for you?

TK: All I know is that for some of the things that you were, that we were supposed to learn in one grade, I guess I missed it out, and I don't know how, but I still don't know how I graduated, but I did.

TI: So it was almost like, just seemed like your education really would suffer by all the things.

TK: Yeah, 'cause I think I spent, in my high school years I think was in four high schools, so I didn't get too much of a good education at that time.

TI: And not just education, but probably friendships. I mean, by moving around you don't really get a chance to...

TK: Yeah, I didn't make that much school friendship either. Yeah, you're right.

TI: So after you graduate from Garfield, what do you do next?

TK: After I graduated from Garfield, by that time my, one of my older brothers, he studied horticulture and he asked his professor in Ohio State where was a good place to start a greenhouse, and then he said one of his students, Shimi Shibata, had a nursery in California at Mount Eden. And he said, "Why don't you contact him and he may give you a job." So he wrote to him and Shimi said, "Yeah, come on down, I'll give you a job." And so he went and got a job, and then after I graduated from high school in '47 Shimi also gave me a job, so I went down and joined them at Mount Eden Nursery.

TI: And it sounds like you did that for a couple years or so, and then...

TK: I did that for a couple years, and then by that time, Tom had married in '45 and he also came down to California and was working at another nursery. And then I think in '48 there was a Nisei nurseryman, he had a, he was running a small greenhouse in San Leandro, and he died somehow and then his greenhouse was up for sale, so we were able to buy that greenhouse and from there we got into the greenhouse business in California.

TI: And when you came down here, did your, your parents came with you?

TK: My father passed away in '47, and then, I think in '48, after we had rented the greenhouse, my mother and my younger sister came down and they joined us in California.

TI: Now, tell me a little bit about your mother. What was she like? I mean, it sounds like she had to work really hard in her life, after the war, supporting the family as a domestic help.

TK: Right.

TI: But what kind of woman was she, what kind of personality? How would you describe your mother?

TK: I think she was, maybe like most Issei women, she was really hardworking and she kept the family, I think she kept the family together. I don't know what else. She lived to be ninety, and by that time she was able to see many of her children succeed and she had quite a few grandchildren that she really enjoyed.

TI: And then your father, tell me a little bit about your father. How would you describe your father?

TK: In a way my father was, I don't know, he... I know one comment he made is, he used to enjoy life and he used to like his liquor, and he smoked and he said, "You know, I guess I'm setting a bad example because I hope my kids won't follow what I did." And in a way I guess it was true, because I don't think, none of us siblings smoked and I don't think none of 'em even drank very much, or if they drank at all. But for the next generation it was a little different. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, good.

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