<Begin Segment 22>

SY: And then when it closed, then everybody just moved out?

YM: I guess so, yeah. It was tail end of it. I remember the first day I went to the hostel I saw Mr. Fukui -- I don't know if you, the, he would be the present Fukui's grandfather, I guess he would be.

SY: Fukui Mortuary Fukui.

YM: Exactly, Mr. Fukui from, and I've always seen him at funerals with his suit on, and here he was at the hostel sweeping down from the second story, the steps. He was sweeping or vacuuming or something. I thought, I couldn't believe it. I thought, oh my gosh.

SY: 'Cause you remembered him from camp, huh?

YM: Yeah. Well I, he was there with his wife and one daughter, I think, but I thought it's like, feels like it's come to this. What is this? [Laughs] It was kind of a shock. I thought, oh my gosh. But the way, everybody had chores to do in the hostel. They were assigned either kitchen help or do the living room or whatever had to be done that way. It just happened to be his turn, I guess.

SY: Yeah, 'cause really, he was, was he prominent in Little Tokyo before the --

YM: Pardon?

SY: Prominent? Was he, in Little Tokyo...

YM: Oh yes, oh yes.

SY: By then, before the war?

YM: Oh yes, everybody...

SY: Everybody knew him.

YM: Everybody that was Nihonjin went to his... yeah.

SY: I see.

YM: He was the only Nihonjin at the time, Nihon, Japanese undertaker at the time. Yeah.

SY: So he was quite...

YM: Yeah, he's still in the same area on, they used to call it Turner Street but it's called, I forget what it is now.

SY: Hewitt, I think. Hewitt or something.

YM: Anyway, still in the same building. I remember the first time I went there when my father died, it was just a house and it wasn't a, they didn't have a building then, and the caskets were upstairs to look, to look over, and across the hall here's their daughter ironing their gym clothes or something. [Laughs] It was a regular residence.

SY: They lived there also.

YM: Yeah, that's the way they were, they started.

SY: Amazing. So he ended up in Cleveland like you did.

YM: Yeah, he did. I don't know what, where, what he did after that, but I remember seeing him.

SY: So now, in the hostel, that's where you met your husband.

YM: Yes, that's right. Very early on, when I first got there, I met him. And the thing was he has an uncle, and we knew his uncle.

SY: Your family knew his...

YM: Yeah, we were... because his uncle's wife happened to be a distant relative of my mother. Isn't that funny? So anyway, "Oh, Momii?" I said wait, I know a Momii, in conversation, you know how it is.

SY: Right.

YM: And after that we didn't actually date right away or anything like that, but went around, we, I'm sure, went out with him before, then we went, got together about in '44 or so.

SY: So by, when you left the hostel you didn't see him for a while, before you, when you, you both left the hostel 'cause you went working for this family.

YM: Yes. Yeah. And he had been at the hostel and gone out already. He was not living there. He just happened to come to spend time there and a mutual friend introduced me to him.

SY: So when did you hook up again?

YM: Well, I saw him from time to time at the hostel 'cause he'd be there with his friends, and then I think in '44 we started to go around together, so we were together about one year before we were married.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.