<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So how long after you graduated high school, how long did you stay in Toledo?

TT: A year.

TI: Okay, so about a year, and then where did you go?

TT: I came back to Seattle.

TI: So the war had ended and you're now back in Seattle. So what do you do when you're back in Seattle?

TT: Well, see, then I went to the employment agency and everybody said, "Well, they're not hiring any Japanese." And I says, "I don't care," they said, "You'll have to be a schoolgirl or do some of..." I said, "Not me, I'm going to get a job in the office." So then I used to run a Burroughs bookkeeping machine, so I went down to the Burroughs company and I says, "I need a job. I've been experienced running a Burroughs bookkeeping machine, and you must have some companies that have your machine someplace in Seattle." And I said, "I need a job." And the man there that was, he says, "Yah, we have a standing order from a company that says if anybody comes looking for a job, they want to see them first. So I said, "Well, send me there." So they sent me there, and I'm talking to the man, he says, "Well, how do I know you could do it?" And I said, "Well, how are you gonna know if you don't hire me?" I said, "I could prove myself, I am a good worker, and I am nosy enough to learn more about the job." So he says, "Okay, you're hired."

TI: And how about the fact that you were Japanese? You said no one was hiring Japanese at this point. Did that ever come up in the conversation?

TT: No. After that, he says, well, he told me he never hired... I said, "Well, if you don't hire me, how are you gonna know?"

TI: But he had never hired Japanese before, so you were the first one there?

TT: Yah.

TI: And what company did this end up being?

TT: This was Crane company, the plumbing on Second and (King Street) right down there.

TI: Okay, so you worked there. Tell me about what was going on with the Japanese American community at this time.

TT: Well, most people were looking for jobs and they would grab any kind of job they had. But nobody could get a job in an office like I had. Maybe secretary, but I was working for Crane company, and I learned every job in the back office. Because as soon as I'd run out of work, I'd ask for more.

TI: So you would just keep volunteering to learn more and more.

TT: Yah. And then I told them I was a secretary, so I used to take letters and do that.

TI: You know, when you come back to Seattle, what was your old neighborhood like? When you think about the Japanese language school, Eighteenth and Weller, where lots of Japanese families were, after the war, what was that like?

TT: Well, my folks, my mother was back, they were here about a year before I came home. So they were getting along.

TI: Were they back in the same old house?

TT: No. They didn't own the house, they were renting, so then they found another house to rent.

TI: And the Japanese language school at this point was being used as a hostel. So did she teach someplace else?

TT: No. What she did is she worked at, you know Cabrini Hospital up there on Pill Hill? She used to walk there from Eighteenth and King Street to go to work, and she used to walk all the way up there. And you know, I really gave her a lot of credit, she said she needed a job and that was the only way she could do it. And so she worked there as a maid or whatever.

TI: So and I'm just wondering, do you know if they still had Japanese language school right after the war?

TT: They didn't have it.

TI: Yeah, I'm trying to think how that worked.

TT: I don't even know when they started.

TI: And then how about your father? What did he do?

TT: Then he... well, they needed somebody at the laundry, so he just became a laundry truck driver.

TI: Okay, so he got essentially his old job back. And your younger sister, was she going to school then?

TT: Yah. And my other sisters were gone by then. My one sister went to Chicago and she worked back there.

TI: Okay. And then you are at Crane company. How long did you work at Crane company?

TT: I worked there for about five years, and then I got married and I had a child. But as soon as I had the child, I think after so many months, they said, "Well, can you come back to work?" And so I tried to go to work.

TI: Back at the Crane company?

TT: Yah. Because it was close enough, because we lived up there, I could just take a bus down. My father used to work nights as a... oh, that's what he did. He worked nights at the White-Henry-Stuart Building cleaning. And so he'd come home and he'd wait for me and take me to work in the morning.

TI: Wow, so he'd work all night?

TT: Yah, he worked the night shift cleaning up the offices. So he'd take me to work and drop me off down there.

TI: At the Crane company.

TT: Yah.

TI: Okay, and then he would go home and go to sleep or something.

TT: And he would, I mean, he would go back, too, yah. And then I'd take a bus home.

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