<Begin Segment 3>

PW: All right, let's go back a little bit. I never asked you if you had any siblings. Did you have any brothers or sisters?

YW: (...) I have a sister, she's a hundred years old and she lives in Ohio and her daughter helps her.

PW: What's her full name?

YW: Her name is Chiye Kondo. But she was in school most of the time, she went to college. But I was the one that was working in the laundry. I was busy, she was a student.

PW: So tell me about, so you grew up in Berkeley, I'm curious, what as Berkeley like for you growing up with your sister?

YW: Berkeley, I love Berkeley. We lived not too far from the campus, and because we lived so close to the campus, we had friends that went to school, and we met a lot of people. In those days, people were so busy, I guess they didn't have time to do their laundry because Dad was always busy. We never had any problems as far as work was concerned, we kept busy. And the Japanese at that time kind of stuck together. Because, as I said, there was still a certain amount of discrimination. Even going to school, there was a student club, Japanese student club, and they had their own social life.

PW: Tell me which schools you went to, grammar school and middle school, high school, where did you go?

YW: Longfellow grammar school, Westlake junior high school, University High School. I went to business school for a while, went to beauty school.

PW: Where was the beauty school?

YW: In Oakland. Everything was close by.

PW: What did you do for fun with your friends? What was a good time for you, even when you were little and then when you got older?

YW: Well, like I said, I lost my mother when I was fourteen, so I was pretty independent. For fun, there was a lot of girls that worked at the laundry, young girls about the same age as myself. And when we wanted to go out, I used to drive the laundry truck. We'd get all dressed up to go to San Francisco, all dressed up. And in those days, all the women wore gloves, high heeled shoes or hats. This is the way they dressed, they were beautiful. And so when we would go out, we'd go to San Francisco, and just to go see the women walking to the department stores all dressed up like that but that was the way they dressed. It was nice. And because I drove and because Dad did finally get a large laundry truck, everybody crawled into the back of the (truck) with the dirty laundries, and I drove. I was able to learn how to drive when I was quite young. And we'd be all dressed up, and we'd go into, with the laundry truck, and we'd go into San Francisco and go to a restaurant and pretend we were one of the ladies in San Francisco. [Laughs]

PW: Did you guys date, like in high school even?

YW: Of course, Because the University of California was right up the street, there was a lot of young men who, I guess they had a lot of fundraising and socials and things of their own up there. And maybe there weren't as many girls, Japanese girls there, and so those of us who lived near town found, they were very, very popular. And so we did get invited to a lot of the Cal things. We almost felt like we were going to Cal, as a matter of fact, because we knew so many people there and we attended so many of their functions. It was nice.

PW: Did your father and mother have you and your sister go to Japanese school?

YW: We did.

PW: Where was that?

YW: We went to school, we had to go to (Japanese) school for an hour after our regular school. And that was in Oakland, so we didn't have much time to spend going, playing after school for my regular school, because all the Japanese girls, all of us had to rush to Japanese school. And our parents wanted us to learn a little Japanese, I guess, so we can converse with them more. But we didn't have any problems actually talking to the Isseis, because all of us spoke the same way. We spoke English and threw in Japanese words that we heard our parents speak. And our parents did the same thing, they spoke Japanese and threw in a few American words. So we didn't have any problems. I think the people from Japan, once in a while they would come over here and wonder how children got along with their parents when we couldn't even speak Japanese. And I have to admit, when we went to Japanese school, it was different because the language that you speak in Japanese school is different from the language our parents spoke, because our parents came from different parts of Japan and they had dialects. And then when they spoke different dialects, it was like a different language. So a lot of our parents kind of spoke, they were speaking Japanese, but not the way you were taught in Japanese school. But my generation, we all spoke about the same way, and because we spoke English and threw in Japanese words, we all (...) understood.

PW: Did your family celebrate Oshogatsu or any of the Japanese...

YW: Yes. They did keep up all the Japanese customs, so we grew up with all the Japanese food. That was our regular diet.

PW: Then what about, I don't know if people in Berkeley did this much, but were there community picnics?

YW: There was. And because my dad had the laundry, he felt like everybody that worked there was his family. So when the organizations used to have their parties, and the different kens, the different...

PW: Prefecture?

YW: Prefecture, people that came from different areas, they had their own picnics, we all went, packed their lunch and went.

PW: Where did you go?

YW: Actually, the Albany Hills was one of the places that they went to. And there was an area up there where they would arrange to have races, and they had their sumo wrestling. Actually, I remember one of the picnics that they had, there was a ship that came in from Japan, and there was a lot of young sailors. The group had invited the sailors to come, and it was a time when everybody was doing hula hoops. And this Japanese man would tell the sailors, "Now, the young people in America can do something that these great Japanese sailors cannot do. And if you can do it, then you'll earn a great prize." And all these little children came out and they were using the hula hoops, and they invited all the sailors to come up and try, and if anybody can do what these little kids did, they can have the hula hoops. And so none of them could do that. But as the prize, they passed out hula hoops to all the sailors that came and told them to go back to Japan and practice doing what the little children in America could do. [Laughs] It was great, it was a great relationship. That's the way the Isseis kept us entertained and kept us together.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.