<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So let's, yeah, actually that was in my notes, I wanted to ask you. So when did you get married?

YU: 1943.

TI: Okay, so this was right when you, about when you started.

YU: 1946 is when I got back to school.

TI: So this is one year in the service, 1943. So who did you marry, and how did you meet?

YU: I married a girl named Mae, M-A-E, Hiraki, and she is from Morgan Hill, just twenty miles south of San Jose. She was also going to school, San Jose State, at the time I met her. But she quit school because they told her that she can't go into teaching because if she can't get student teaching they won't, she will never get certified, or teaching credentials.

TI: Because she was Japanese.

YU: She's Japanese. So she decided to quit. And that's about the same, she quit a year before I came there.

TI: Okay. But when you got married in 1943, did she stay, where did she live after you got married?

YU: She left camp and came with me.

TI: Okay, so like in...

YU: Fort Meade, South Dakota.

TI: South Dakota, and then later on Wyoming and all that. Okay. And then during that time you had a baby girl.

YU: Yeah, baby girl.

TI: Okay. And so you're returning to San Jose not only as a student but also as a father and a husband.

YU: Yeah. So then the fun starts, because I get here and I'm discharged, and I have my Ruptured, it was called Ruptured Duck, showing that you got honorable discharge. I didn't have any more clothes than the clothes that I had, khakis that I had. Went and I applied for jobs, and they -- not jobs but applied to get an apartment -- and I, and this was in the same area that I used to live in before I went into the service. He said, "Sorry, but all the rooms are rented." So next day, a couple days, the whole week goes by, and the "For rent" is still there. And as time went on we see that these things were happening frequently.

TI: This is in San Jose?

YU: San Jose, yeah. Then my, a man named Sam Della Magiore that was a wrestling coach, well, I called him first thing I arrived, so then he says, "How are you doing?" I said, "Well, I can't find a place to stay." And he says, he was really mad, but he said, "You know," he said, "I bought a place out here. It's about two miles away from the school, near an orchard." He says, "There's a shack on there. Why don't you come and stay there? You don't have to pay any rent or anything." Okay, so I stayed with him there for about two, two and a half years.

TI: And during that time they just weren't renting to Japanese?

YU: Well, they started to, I think, but I wasn't interested 'cause I was now living with Sam Della Magiore.

TI: Okay. When you finished San Jose State, what did you do next?

YU: Well, I started looking for a job and then I ran into trouble again, because I went to San Jose Hospital and applied for a job, and they looked at me and, I mean the pathologist looked at me, and he says, "We can't hire you." I said, "Why not?" He says, "I've worked with hundreds of veterans returning from the war and everything." Said, "I had no problem." He said, "Yeah, but that was during the war. Now you're in civilian life, and I don't think they would want a Japanese touching them." So I said, so I was furious. So I came back and I told Sam Della Magiore about it, and he was furious. But he had friends, he had a resident at O'Connor Hospital and his name was Dr. Joseph Calcagno, and he talked with him and Dr. Calcagno said, "Wait a minute. I'll talk with the Sisters of Charity, the administrator." And the administrator talked with a pathologist, and they says, "Oh sure." So they said, "Well, maybe he could work here and get some experience, and then cover us for night calls." And I said okay, so at that time I was the lowest paid, under a hundred dollars a month, but I had a job. So from there, I worked and then at night I, and when school started again I worked at night covering the calls, emergency calls. And then in the daytime I went to school, but the same time I also got a job teaching self defense. This became the Judo Club.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.