<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Now, so after about fifteen years, you left Moses Lake. Why did you leave?

CH: Well, in the meantime then, Bill got into importing/exporting in Japan, and he was making a lot of trips to Japan. And we decided, well, he wasn't hardly home, he wasn't in Moses Lake that much. But then after I got to Seattle, I knew that there was something going on. He was seeing other people, women, I'm talking about, and in Japan, too. [Interruption] By that time I had already started getting a divorce.

TI: So... wow, just lots of changes for you in your life.

CH: Oh, yeah, uh-huh.

TI: And I'm thinking...

CH: It was big changes where I had to take responsibility, like I had two kids, and I know I didn't want them to go through this and try to keep the family together as much as I can, but it was getting harder and harder to do that when he wasn't home.

TI: Now when you think of Moses Lake, I was thinking of your background, the first year of your parents doing the fruit growing, then living in San Francisco. And then living in a really small town or small city in Moses Lake.

CH: You have to learn to adjust, and I think in the wartime, you know, you kind of make up your mind, there's a lot of things you can't buy. I know in Moses Lake I stood in line to buy hamburgers, and there was only Wednesday, and I can't remember what day they let you know that we'll have hamburger on those certain days. Lot of this had to go to the armed forces, and so meat was hard to get. We didn't have steak for a long time. I went to Moses Lake to the grocery store, and like I say, I had to stand in line to get hamburger. So it was hard in those days, you know, trying to cook. And then I was feeding, besides my husband the children, and then Tako I think at that time was eating with us, huh? And then Jack and Mike and Tako. Can you imagine me cooking for those kind of guys? I can't imagine what I cooked. But I'm sure it was like stir-fry type of thing with rice day in and day out. [Laughs] And then I tried to make tsukemono by vegetables, whatever I could. At first it was radishes, because that was easy to get, to grow, too. And then salt it down and put a rock on it and try to make tsukemono.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.