<Begin Segment 16>

TI: We, with your husband I talked about kind of your family life and you kind of overheard that. Is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of your family in Chicago?

MH: I worked at the Social Security Administration for one year, but in order to get to the office it took over an hour by L. And we were living by the University of Chicago, so I applied for admission to the University and was accepted, but my mother said, "Boys go to college and girls have to work," so I worked full time and went to school part time.

TI: And by working full time and working, was that to help support the family?

MH: Yeah, that was just, my father couldn't work. There's just my mother and myself and a young brother just starting high school and a brother going to college on a GI Bill.

TI: And so your older brothers didn't have to work to support the family?

MH: No, they were, no, they were all married. They're all married and having children, so they didn't, they didn't help the family at all. They didn't have to.

TI: Now was that, did that seem fair to you, that you...

MH: Well, it just seemed that's, that was it. That's the nature of things. So I worked at the University. I was secretary to the dean of School of Business.

TI: But you were able to graduate, though, from --

MH: No, no. I could barely, I think I took one course each semester. Learned how to swim, though, took swimming class during the summer.

TI: So you've done quite a bit of research on the files, your mother did an autobiography, so you've read a lot, learned a lot, and probably thought a lot about this. What does this all mean to you when you think about the work that you've done?

MH: All this?

TI: Yeah.

MH: Well, it's just information for our children, grandchildren.

TI: And so if your, so if your grandchild, when I talked to your husband yesterday -- or, I'm sorry, yesterday, earlier, about your grandson, if he asked, "Grandma, so what's important in all this?" What would you --

MH: Well, he'd have a knowledge of his background, or his grandparents or great-grandparents, so he would know what happened. And I have nieces that are particularly interested in the history of the family and they have pursued these stories.

TI: Yeah, you have so much documentation about your father. Do you know if there was ever a file on your grandfather?

MH: I never checked.

TI: 'Cause that might be interesting to, to look.

MH: Yeah, I never thought to check on my grandfather.

TI: And then you have your mother's autobiography.

MH: Yeah.

TI: Now, was that translated into English?

MH: Yeah, very roughly. I think the person who did it had trouble with some of the kanji.

TI: And then now we have, we have interviews of both you and your husband, so they can also look at that.

MH: And then I took a U.S. history course at Bradley University and the project was to write a story, so I wrote about the evacuation, so we have a story that I wrote, too.

TI: So I think you've left a rich legacy for your grandchildren.

MH: Yeah.

TI: Good. So anything else that you want to talk about?

MH: Well, after Frank had his drugstore, he got sick one day and I could run the drugstore, but I couldn't fill prescriptions, so I decided to pharmacy school.

TI: Oh, how interesting.

MH: So I had credits from University of Chicago and I took some courses at junior college, and I was admitted to the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy, so I went for three years and got a B.S. in Pharmacy. But after I graduated I didn't want to work in the drugstore, so I went to hospital pharmacy instead.

TI: I see.

MH: Yeah. So I worked twenty-two years at a hospital in Skokie, here, not far from here.

TI: Wow, that's pretty impressive that you can, that you could just pick it up like that.

MH: It was, it was fun. At the pharmacy school I associated with all these young Asian people. We all sort of formed together.

TI: So these are Asian Americans or...

MH: Yeah. No, well, the Chinese were from Hong Kong. Some were Chinese American. There's a Korean. Mostly Chinese. And we got along fine. We helped each other.

TI: Now, did you share with this group what happened during the war?

MH: No.

TI: Now why is that? Why didn't you tell them about...

MH: I don't know. That's something in the past, you know? We're busy studying.

TI: Well, I think I'm gonna end the interview now because of the vacuum cleaner.

MH: Oh, we have the vacuum cleaner again.

TI: But Margaret, thank you so much for doing the interview. This was really interesting, so I'm glad it worked that you could do this interview.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.