<Begin Segment 21>

AH: And tell me a little bit about your family.

SH: Now?

AH: Yeah, your family, yours and your husband's, Noboru and your family.

SH: We had four children. The first one was born the year we came to Seattle. In fact, I was probably pregnant then, and I didn't know. And I went into teaching at Colman school, and that was in the olden days, because it was in the days when I was teaching and really got along fine at Colman school. But the teachers there were all very older teachers and many, like, spinsters and all. And so I enjoyed it. There was only one other young teacher in the building. The supervisor came by one day and she saw that I was pregnant, and she just went ballistic. She said, "What are we going to do with this lady? She's pregnant." [Laughs] And I thought, "What's wrong with that?" And the principal was an old man, and he said, "She's been teaching, she's doing fine." And the supervisor said, "Yes, but we have a policy in the Seattle schools that at five months you're supposed to quit. You can't teach after five months." So they didn't give me any leave, but I was already about seven, eight months along. And so I had only until May... or it was around March until May. And I stayed home and I had my child, and then when Yoko was born, it was in '54. Then September came along and he was in school, and I had to go back to teaching, but I couldn't go back because the rule is that you can't go back to teaching until your child is a year old. And so I had to start looking for a job although she was a real baby, and it would have been nicer if I could have gotten in around there. But no, they wouldn't even give me a job. So I finally, the week before school started, a school in Highline, Normandy Park, they needed a teacher. And so the superintendent, assistant superintendent was packing and he said, "Will you come to my home for an interview? Because I'm leaving for a vacation before school starts." And so I went out there, and he looked at my records and he says, "You're hired," on the spot. And so he took me and I went out there and taught in Normandy Park for two years, but it was so far to go from Seattle. We lived in the Woodland Park area, which is...

AH: I know where it is.

SH: And then I had to go out to Normandy Park, which was by the airport, every day from about six in the morning. It was too much. And so I quit after two years, although that was probably the nicest group of people I ever met out there.

AH: So all together you had how many children?

SH: Four children.

AH: And what are their names and gender and what's happening with them?

SH: Yoko is... let's see, I have to think. She's fifty-eight now, okay. Fifty-eight, and she went to Smith College, and she got a degree there and then went to the University of Washington and got a degree in, her PhD in Psychology and did some work there during that time. But when her children were born, she decided to stay home. And then the second one is Jun, and he was born seven years later. Is that right, seven? Let's see, '54... '61. He was born in '61, seven years later. And then we decided we wanted more children, but he was born in Princeton because we had gone to Princeton so that Professor Janssen out there wanted to have, he's in Japanese history, and he wanted to have a Japanese library there and there was no Japanese library. And my husband had taken, gotten a master's in librarianship besides his graduate school. So Professor Janssen really wanted him to work with professor because he said that he, my husband had the knowledge in Japanese history, but he didn't want to teach because he didn't think his English was... he didn't think his English was adequate for that. And so he decided not to teach, so he had that librarianship degree. And so he set up the library there, and during the two years we were there, then the University of Washington asked him to come back. And they wanted him to, because they were starting the class in kanbun, and he was the only one that they could find who would be able to teach that kind of reading old documents and all. And so he was called back by the faculty in the Japanese department, and so he came back to the University of Washington and he got a position. But he never did get his PhD, because he did go to Japan to study after, and he felt that there were many, many people in Japan that were much more proficient than him that were teaching in that field, because his field is so specialized. But he said that he didn't feel right in asking for a PhD when none of those professors had a PhD. So he never got a PhD, and he just studied there on his own. And so when he came back, I think that Professor Janssen would have been glad to have had him with him, but he decided that it was better to come where he could work in a field he really enjoyed. And so he started teaching kanbun and the upper level courses until he died.

AH: And then you had two other children...

SH: Yes. [Laughs] Then I had two other children, but it was after my son was born. Then my son grew up, and he went to Brown, graduated from Brown, and he went into history but he worked for, in the investment banking field. He went to Japan for a while and he was there a while, and then he kind of got an interest in that. And he worked for Merrill Lynch until recently and then he retired at a young age. And then Amy was born, and she's two years younger, so she's forty-nine. And she was in music all her life. We started her at four and a half, and she did very well in music and went on to Julliard and graduated from there. And she got into, she was one of the youngest in the Met, Metropolitan Opera orchestra for quite a number of years, but she was married and they had children. So she and her husband both are musicians. He's a cellist, and they came back to San Francisco. And they have two children, and she's a violinist in the San Francisco Symphony and he's a cellist there. And then we had Yumi, and she's two years younger than that. And we had, while the three of them were growing up, I stayed home for maybe about eight or ten years, and then I went back to teaching and I worked the rest of my life. But Yumi is a psychologist, and she went to Harvard and got her PhD at University of Washington. And she's been the one who's been working all the time in psychology.

AH: So those Harvard series that your father had came to roost, didn't they?

SH: [Laughs] Right.

AH: Well, I know you also have a slew of very talented grandchildren, too, and I won't ask you to go through 'em all. But I would like to relate something, because you talk a lot in our correspondence about your family, and I know you're proud of 'em. And you also sent the headstone with "Toda" on there. And I wanted to ask you, what is the... we know that there was a lot to do about the Japanese spirit, etcetera, but what is the Toda spirit? When you think about being a Toda and being in that particular family line, etcetera, what are the things you take pride in? What do you conjure up?

SH: I would say probably "work hard and there's nothing that you would be unable to do." You can achieve whatever you wish to do if you work hard at it.

AH: You can dream the impossible dream, but it's not impossible if you work hard, right?

SH: Right. Never give up.

AH: Frank, do you have any other questions? I want to thank you very much. It's very rare that I get to talk to such a gracious, such an intelligent, cultured, sort of, frank speaking sort of person who's honest about what they've observed and presented in that way, and when they don't know something, to be honest about that. I think it's a tremendous thing. I'm glad that Frank asked you the question that was most affecting to you, because I think you needed the catharsis of being able to feel through that, which he allowed you to do. And I was glad that that was a very dignified and moving kind of experience. But on behalf of Densho and Frank and myself, really, thank you very, very much.

SH: And I thank you.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.