Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tom Matsuoka Interview
Narrator: Tom Matsuoka
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Ridgefield, Washington
Date: May 7, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-mtom-01-0013

<Begin Segment 13>

TM: Yeah. Anyway, one year -- I think after start working in the furniture factory, I think it was one year later, I'm pretty sure, that I was a glueman. I usually glue together all those lumber to make one piece. Then take it to the planer and after dried up, then plane it down. Then make sander and sand it off and smooth them up, but that much was the first step of my work. You know, for a glue room, summertime was really hot. No overshirts, just undershirts I was working. And the window is right there and I looking in the window one time and oh, there is a Japanese girl go by. I thought, gee, that's rare. How in the world is Japanese woman going to work? Then I found out that Mrs. Maeda get pregnant and she, she was making lunch for few people. I don't know why. Most of the people used to bring a lunch, but must have been she was making just bachelor, I think. For married people bring their lunch and bachelor, bachelor people, I think, she used to make a lunch. I think that's the way it was. And she get the pregnant and hard work for making lunch so she is hired is a helper and that was Kaz. And that's where I met her.

That was early summer anyway. I know she came, she came that time around first part of July or something. Then I acquainted her. It was same thing, I have to play ball all the time. Oh, gee, I play ball all time. Well, then we, that time she was a junior, junior in high school. Then we go together. Then she graduated, next spring she graduated. Then she went to work pick strawberry after she graduate high school, and she want look job and, by gosh, she found a job right away. I don't know if she finished picking the berry or not. That what she found a job is Okuda Shibagaki export/import in Seattle, and that's where she start work.

Well, I was still working at the furniture factory and she was pretty good because across the road there was a restaurant Yagi. You know that Yagi? Anyway, is a Yagi family had a restaurant and noontime pretty busy for lunchtime. So Kaz work for Okuda Shibagaki and lunchtime come, she go out there and help that restaurant. So she get the free meal. She was pretty good. I don't know where she stayed that time. At Mr. and Mrs. Shibagaki's house or that restaurant owner's house. Anyway, one or another she stayed there. I, I stayed at... what their name was? Anyway, Twelfth Avenue and Main Street on the corner. Oh, you know. Ikeda -- no. Oh, he married to Mrs. Shigaya, Mabel. What was now? What their name was? Anyway, that house I had rented one room and Kaz must have stayed either Yagis family or someplace anyway, she stayed there. Well, then times go by and that fall come. Of course, she want go to college, I guess. I don't know. But she didn't say, but she just keep working and finally we talk about maybe we get married. So that's November finally we get married. We married.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.