<Begin Segment 13>

AH: Now, this period you know he's not just coming back right away, right? So how does it impact the family in terms of the family socials? You're going to college. Do you drop out?

SH: No.

AH: So you continued to go to college.

SH: I kept on continuing and then still working every day, would come home and worked at the newspaper in the office, and helping with whatever we could do. And so I kept on working all the time until I got married.

AH: And how did your mother handle this? The sixteen year old bride.

SH: I know. My mother was also one who was just helping there. She would do whatever she could do, and I remember that she would help wherever she was needed. And she was not real capable of doing things, but she even went to help with where the newspapers were folded and coming out of the press, then they had to take 'em out of the machine and send them off to different places. And you have to take them out of the machine, and she was doing that one day and her thumb was chopped off. And so I remember that. And so my mother helped wherever she could, but she was not one who had any word in saying how it should be run, or nobody talked to her about it. And she was just trying to run a family, and she had two children. My youngest sister was a baby when my father was taken. She was a real baby still.

AH: Well, who helped out? I mean Tetsuko has got this responsibility nominally anyway for the paper and everything, and she's working with Dunkley, who was the lawyer for the paper. But then I'm trying to figure out, did the Buddhist group that originally...

SH: Nobody helped that way. So this is why it was hard on my mother, because she's trying to be a mother. So I remember that in those days, that my two sisters, you know shop windows, how they are, they have a little ledge where the window goes up. And my two sisters, they painted that completely dark so you couldn't see. And the two sisters, so they won't be near the machines, were put up in that window and played in the window.

AH: So you're in a position where you've got this rudderless ship almost.

SH: It was; it really was.

AH: But it's also a ship that's got a cargo of gold, because you're starting to actually, economically, make quite a bit of money. So you could afford to stay at school then instead of coming home.

SH: Right.

AH: But what an anomaly that was. And then this is what Omura came into then.

SH: Yes.

AH: [Addressing FA] Do you have any questions before we move on to Omura?

FA: Emotionally, how was your mother dealing with your father's absence? Her husband, I'm sorry.

AH: My husband or my dad?

FA: Your dad.

AH: My dad...

FA: How did your mother deal with your father's being taken away?

SH: She was just upset because she didn't know how to deal with the children in the family, what to do about trying to help in the shop, and also take care of children. So we stuck them in the window, and everybody's trying to do their job working. And then as they were growing older, then my sister was one who really cared about little kids, and so she would be trying to take them around, and if she's going out shopping or anything, she took them along with her. So she had a lot to do with helping them out. And then my two brothers were still in, I think, junior high. And they were the ones that suffered a lot, too, because they were on their own then. And in the beginning when my father was there, they were delivering the newspaper because it didn't come out very often and they had a job to do. And so they did that for a while, but then besides that, it was not the direction. And the older one who was just two years younger than myself, he was fine. He kept on going to school, but the younger one started to get in trouble. He was not going to school, and he got in trouble with the truant officer and then he finally had to go to court. And my mother is just completely...

AH: Beleaguered.

SH: She didn't know what to do. And so she's just so lost, she didn't know what to do. And we're trying to console her and help her out, too, because she feels she's let my dad down, and everybody down, so she's talking about suicidal things. So that was a difficult time.

AH: Did you ever travel over to Santa Fe, were you allowed to see your father?

SH: Yes.

AH: Can you talk a little bit about those experiences?

SH: I went to Santa Fe once with my mom, she wanted to go and talk to him. And so we went, and when we went to Santa Fe, there were guards there all around with rifles, and then when we went into this little area where we were supposed to go and talk to them, then they said they would go and get him, and he came. And then there was a table, and my mom and I sat on one side and he was on the other. And then she talked to him and told him things, and he was like a different person. He just had tears in his eyes, but he didn't say much, and he didn't talk very much. And then the guard was standing there with his rifle while he was being interrogated, or he thought we were talking. And so anyway, I don't know what she got out of it, but it was not a pleasant experience.

AH: So it was one visit?

SH: Just one time.

AH: Tetsuko wasn't there, it was just you and your mom?

SH: No, just one time.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.