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VY: So later on, so you lived in Seattle with... was it just you and your siblings living together?

MK: Yes. Our relatives arranged for us to live at this Japanese Baptist home called Fujin Home. So they let us in, and we three sisters had one, it was a parlor in the room, one of the parlors, so we slept there. But in the morning, upon awakening, we had to straighten out the room and open up the doors so that it was, again, a parlor and not our private room. Whereas my brother had a private room to himself in the same building.

VY: What was the age difference between you and your siblings?

MK: My sister right below me, I think we were about a year and a half apart, and she and my brother were four years apart. And my brother and the youngest sister were two years apart.

VY: So it sounds like you kind of had to finish raising them on your own.

MK: Yes, it was something like that. In the meantime, when we first arrived in Seattle, too, I was working as a housemaid up in Laurelhurst, and I would take off on weekends to come down to Fujin Home and visit my siblings. And my younger sister right below me worked at Fort Lawton while the youngest sister and my brother were still in school. My brother, I think, was in middle school, and my sister was still in elementary school.

VY: And did they all live with you until they went through school and graduated?

MK: Yeah, finally when I left Laurelhurst, I took on a government job for about a year with the IRS downtown. And at that time, we had taken on an apartment that was owned by a Japanese couple, right across the street from the Seattle University campus, in fact. And there we all lived together until my sister right below me got married and she left. And so that was my younger sister and brother with me. And eventually when my brother finished high school, he started the UW. But I didn't realize at the time how bright he was. And the first two years you had to take the same courses as other freshmen and sophomores, and it was, at that time, we called it a Mickey Mouse course, it was just too much for him. He was way beyond that, and so he got very bored and he just quit school and went to work for Boeing. And so my youngest sister finished school then, and my brother took on another apartment not too far from where we lived. And my younger sister then finished high school, and I don't remember where she worked. But she eventually got married, so that left me and my brother alone.

VY: And then what happened after that? Did you go back to L.A.?

MK: Yes. Well, I'm trying to think now. The owners of that apartment building eventually sold it, but that was sometime later. But while my sisters were still together, I did go down to L.A. and worked at UCLA.

VY: What did you do there?

MK: Let's see. I found work at the Issei History Project.

VY: Issei Oral History Project?

MK: Issei, first generation history project. And that's where they gathered historical facts from all the immigrants, the Issei folks, and built an archive. But I was there for maybe about a year, and then I came back up to Seattle.

VY: What kind of work did you do for that project?

MK: I was the secretary. I just made appointments, general secretary work.

VY: Did you meet any of the people that were being interviewed?

MK: Yes. There were a few JACL officers that I met just very briefly. Frank Chuman, I think, was one. I can't remember the names now.

VY: That's okay. Okay, so then after that, did you come back to Seattle or did you go somewhere else?

MK: No, it was back and forth from L.A. to Seattle, and then I took a job up here with Harborview. Before that, while I was at the IRS, I got tired of just being a file clerk filing the 1040 forms at that time, And I attended a nine-month medical secretarial course and became a secretary at Harborview in the department of pathology, for Dr. Clyde Jenkins at the time. It was back in, maybe about '55 or so, and I was there maybe for about a year or two. And then after that, I went on to... let's see. I also worked at the Seattle Art Museum. But before that, I think I took off for L.A. again, and I've been moving around so much I can't remember what I was doing in the interim.

VY: I have a quick question. It sounds like in the past, you had family in Los Angeles from when your parents were first there. Did you stay in touch with any of those family members, or did you ever know any of those family members?

MK: No, we never lived in L.A.

VY: No, but I mean when your mother and father met in Los Angeles.

MK: I had an aunt... in the meantime, they also moved down to San Diego, and we met them there briefly on a vacation, and that was the only contact. And then in the meantime, my (mother's) grandfather and stepmother and her stepsister moved back to Japan.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.