<Begin Segment 29>

SY: Because whatever happened to the Maharanis? Did you eventually just dissolve? Because you've always had these nice organizations that you've belonged to, women's...

CI: Well, like, see, Mary was in it. I see members but we have not met. We keep saying, "We've got to meet, we've got to meet." And one of the things we did when we were young is that, before we were married, is we adopted an orphan in Japan, Ma-chan. And Mary kept a scrapbook which she gave to me about six months ago. Said, "Now, here, you take it for a while." So I must try to find out whether the orphanage is still viable. If he's alive, he has to be in his sixties, 'cause he was just a little boy. We were already in our teens.

SY: And you basically just sent him money every once in a while?

CI: Every month. But we used to sell sembei. Once a year we had a big sembei drive. So we sold that, and then I can't remember how else we raised money but we gave, every month we sent money to the orphanage for our little Ma-chan.

SY: And it was for how long you did this?

CI: Five years, six years, I can't remember.

SY: He was a baby.

CI: Well, he was a toddler, I think. But Mary's the one that kept all the letters. He was in kind of a, I think a Catholic orphanage. I have it if you want to look, I have the scrapbook at home.

SY: That's worth exploring. That's such a great story.

CI: I know, I must do that.

SY: Because the group really, I mean, was that your main fundraising project for this little boy?

CI: Yes, uh-huh. I had two, I can't remember the name of the street. I said, "Nobody go there because I have that street." Because they expected me every year. It was almost every house was a Japanese house, and they knew that I was going to come once a year to buy sembei, sell sembei in Gardena.

SY: Oh. You had to sell.

CI: Yeah, we had to sell the sembei.

SY: And so what other projects did you -- was that the only fundraising the Maharanis did?

CI: I think so. I think that was it.

SY: And did the other groups like that, the women's groups, did they do similar things? Because I know there was a period in Los Angeles where there were --

CI: Lot of girls clubs.

SY: -- quite a few of these girls clubs. Is that...

CI: I don't know.

SY: But your group really primarily was social, you met...

CI: Social and our little orphan.

SY: And you met and you went to...

CI: We met once a month. And I think... none of us had cars. We all lived all over the place. How did we get together? I don't know. I guess we took buses and streetcars, I think. But I don't remember ever getting in a car saying, "Take me to Sharon's house." [Laughs] Because nobody had a car. Our parents had one car, right, and that was for the father to go to work.

SY: And you also went to dances, right?

CI: I have no idea how we got to the dances. [Laughs] And we used to put on these dances. We had little invitations, and it seems to me, how did we do all that?

SY: You had very enterprising women.

CI: I guess so.

SY: And the dances were all friendly, there were no...

CI: Yeah. But, you know, we had a sound system and I think, "How did we do that?" We had records. I don't know if we had announcers, I don't know.

SY: Lots of things that you did, really. And did a lot of women meet their husbands that way?

CI: I think quite a few did, socially.

SY: But eventually it just died out.

CI: Yeah, well, yes, after a while.

SY: You all had your own lives.

CI: Yeah, everybody got married and then you started having babies and you get too busy.

SY: So really, if you look back at your life, you must know so many people from all these different things that you did. You probably keep in touch with a lot of them.

CI: Well, some. But you know, people move away and pass away.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.