<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And when you think of Ketchikan, growing up in that environment, what is it that is so precious to you? What's so, why are you so fond of that experience?

RO: Well, probably my friends mainly, and as I told you before, there, the prejudice wasn't there. I was friends with a lot of the children that were the higher ups in Ketchikan, banker's son, Coast Guard captain's son, and so on. But we had one thing in common, some of us liked to collect stamps, so that's what we'd, we'd get together for that too.

TI: Now if, after the war, later on as you got older, if you went back to Ketchikan, would many of your friends still be in Ketchikan?

RO: I doubt if they're around. Every year down in Seattle, in Edmonds, there's a Ketchikan picnic. In fact, there's one coming up on the twenty-third, and it's hard to believe how many people attend that. Although they might not be my peers anymore, there's usually about four hundred people.

TI: So I'm confused. Why in Edmonds of all places to have a Ketchikan kind of gathering?

RO: I guess it just started that way. But it's a situation where our generation's dwindling fast.

TI: But when you go to this Edmonds thing, there are a lot of oldtimers, I mean, people who are --

RO: There's oldtimers there, but I think it's more of a younger generation.

TI: Okay. Before we go to the beginning of the war, anything else before the war? Any kind of things you want to talk about in terms of growing up in Ketchikan, a story or thoughts about Ketchikan?

RO: Well, let's see. The, one of the reasons I chose my profession, pharmacy, was because I used to always go to this Walker Drugstore, and I'd see this pharmacist behind the counter there. You don't have bags or stuff, so he's hand packaging 'em, and that impressed me for some reason, clean, you know?

TI: So these, like pills and things, they would be wrapped up into little packages?

RO: Or whatever else, shampoo or whatever he's, hand doing it.

TI: Did you ever have any, your family, any medical emergencies when you were in Ketchikan, and what were the medical facilities like?

RO: Well, there was a, there's a general hospital in Ketchikan, but I was a serial asthmatic when I was young, and I didn't go to the hospital as such, but this one Filipino friend informed my mother that he knows of something that's good for asthma, and that was adrenaline. And in those days you could buy it without a prescription. It's an injection. And it really works, but then you can gradually feel the effects wearing off, too. Could be dangerous using it, you know, if you inject too much, but I was okay. My mother did a good job.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.