<Begin Segment 19>

SY: Now once you moved back to California from New York and you were now married, so where did you settle and what did you and your husband do when you got back here?

MK: He had four units I guess on Tenth Avenue and Jefferson, that's just where the J car used to come and turn around there. But anyhow there were four units there and they were rented out. We took one unit there after we came back, made good friends, Takahashis (and Fujimatas) and his brother, all lifelong friends (...).

SY: So by this time in Los Angeles, what was the atmosphere like in the 1950s when you came back here? Was it open to Japanese?

MK: I felt it was. I got very, very busy I guess raising the kids. My husband worked for the post office for thirty some years before he retired. But I was very fortunate getting a job with the YMCA.

SY: Very early on? After your kids had grown up?

MK: After my kids... the youngest one was in junior high then.

SY: And how many kids did you have?

MK: Three, a girl and two boys.

SY: And when was your first child born?

MK: She was born in 1952 and Rob was born in '55 and Wayne '57.

SY: And so you spent how many years raising them at home?

MK: Well, Wayne was in junior high by the time I went to work for the YMCA and worked for them for twenty-eight years. Started out at the Crenshaw branch and then we moved to the Westchester branch and then I went to corporate headquarters. Because I started out at Crenshaw with John Ouellet who was the young executive there and then he was promoted to Westchester as their executive there so I went with him there. And then went to corporate headquarters downtown eventually became president of the YMCA all metropolitan Los Angeles so I became his assistant there so had a good, good working experience all those years.

SY: That's wonderful.

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