<Begin Segment 24>

SY: So why did you decide to leave Cleveland?

YM: Well, we were there 'til 1948, and we were married in '45 and we were there 'til '48. It was about time we, 'cause my home was Los Angeles.

SY: You were keeping in touch with your family all this time?

YM: Yes.

SY: So you knew what happened to them after the war? What happened?

YM: That's one thing I didn't experience, is what it was like to return to California. And I think it was a hardship on a lot of people, but since that would've happened like in 1946 or so, we didn't, I just heard what it was like. But we didn't experience that.

SY: But your family had the house to go back to.

YM: The, my sister's house, since she had the house, I think they all lived there together, which was kind of hard. She had a two bedroom house. And then the men of the house were trying to find work, and my brother-in-law and my sister did well, though, he said he even did dishwashing. This is my brother-in-law, and eventually he and his wife did antique repairing, which is working with porcelain, china, figurines and things like that, and they did very well 'cause he was very artistic. He was very good with his hands and he did beautiful repair work. As a matter of fact, some dealer that, he'd bring him, bring him stuff that somebody else had repaired and he'd do it over 'cause he was really, really good at that. And they did well, but my sister said they were just lucky, the timing, because people were coming back from Europe and there was all of this stuff coming out of Europe, and all the dealers were getting this and some had to be repaired and whatever. And then they had just a regular, just anybody that had broken pieces or something, they would come, and so he did, they did very well after the war.

[Interruption]

SY: So I'm curious what your oldest brother ended up doing when they came back to Los Angeles, 'cause he was the one that lost his business, right?

YM: Right. Are we on? Okay. Yeah, I wanted to tell you about how he lost his business, if I have time. After December the 7th -- I, did I go through this already?

SY: I think you mentioned that he, yes. Yes, so... right, exactly, he decided to close it.

YM: Yeah, he sold it to the, one of the meat department men wanted to buy it. So later on as, I don't know exactly what it was, but there was a time where people who had a business were able to claim some...

SY: Loss.

YM: Loss, and they would be paid for it. And this was loss due to evacuation and they were, if you had a business and you lost money on it or what. Well, my poor brother, he had sold the business not because of evacuation but because of the war breaking, so the poor fellow, he didn't, he wasn't able to recoup any of his money for the loss of, I'm sure he didn't sell it at a, you know.

SY: At the normal price.

YM: Yeah, the price was probably not right. So he missed out on that, so after the war they wrote to us, he didn't go right into produce again. He had a business of some kind of crate. In the old days they, all the vegetables, fruits came in wooden crates, and I guess there was a need for people to repair these crates and resell them. There was something available like that, so he started that, still related to what he used to do, and I think they had a fire or something so that was the end of that. And then I think he went back to produce again, so the rest of his life he had a produce business, the same type of produce business that he did prewar.

SY: So he was able to restart.

YM: Yeah, so he --

SY: He had, like a produce retail...

YM: He was in retail for all those years, yes.

SY: And so he ended up taking care of your mom?

YM: Yes, and so by the, that time my brother and I were moving out, we were married, so my mother stayed with my older brother and she stayed there for a long time. Yeah, until she passed away, so it was a long time for them to be together.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.