<Begin Segment 24>

AI: Well, can you tell me some about the practical daily realities of when he was in the TB ward? What kinds of visitation schedule did you have? And what kinds of daily activity would there be?

KM: Well, when they first opened this new TB ward, they decided to have two hours visitation once a week. And then there's two passes...

AI: Only once a week?

KM: Once a week, uh-huh. And then two passes. And only two can get in, go in at a time. This is at the beginning. And then my folks still lived in camp one and then I lived in camp two. Well, my folks somehow would always go half an hour before the tickets is released. And they'd go in to see my husband and stay there the whole two hours. And I'm waiting in the waiting room. Well, finally my husband got brave enough, and he says, "How come Kay isn't here? I want to see Kay." And then he says, "What do you mean? I'm your, we're your parents. Kay isn't that important." I mean that's the attitude my stepmother had. Before they just wanted me so badly, but they just turned right against me. They says that I took my husband away from her. Well anyway we had a real, it wasn't very beautiful [Laughs] harmonious family relation at all. And so they would do that a few times. And finally Jack got brave enough -- you have to really know my husband -- he got braver. And it's very hard for him to say anything out loud or do it by force to hurt somebody. But he finally told the nurse's aide, "Would you please take that two passes, or one pass, whatever and have it aside on the day of visitation and give it to my wife, 'cause I'd rather see her than my folks." And so then that way I was able to go see him. But that's the circumstance that we had during the visitation, during his sickness time.

And then my sister-in-law, which was from Utah, she came over and made special trip to come and see her brother. And then she came over to stay with me thinking that I was alone. So she wanted to kinda comfort me and so forth. And then my father-in-law came from camp one and said, "You gotta go home with me, 'cause you're our daughter, and the peoples gonna all see that you're at Kay's place instead of our place, and that doesn't look right." So they forced her to go back. And then afterwards I heard from her that my in-laws said that the reason that Jack is being treated so nicely at the hospital is because we gave 'em bribery to the doctors. And they, that was all false. They weren't allowed bribery, or they couldn't accept it. But they wanted to make her know that they're doing their part or something.

And you know, and there was lotta things that we couldn't tell anybody, and it was just lie after lie. It just, they, drifted us farther and farther apart. And then I really felt like, boy, this is really the way the Japanese bride gets treated, 'cause I read lotta stories about bondage of the daughter-in-law. And I said, in this day and age I'm still living the same, because she wanted to be that way. I had to be her slave. When she was sick, she gets a doctor's prescription every four hours. Now I had to measure that, and spoon it (to) her with ice water. And if I miss five minutes she says, "It's because you don't care for me." And all the things I had to take from her.

AI: That's since you were the daughter-in-law?

KM: Yeah. Daughter-in-law.

AI: That's what she expected?

KM: Oh, and she would tell different stories to my sister-in-laws, and then they would start turning against me. And then my mother when she made, she says for me to get, gave us the blessing to get married, she said, "Once you get (into) the family, no matter what happens you're not to come back." And so I said, "Well I never wanted to let them know," 'til I got so sick that they knew something was wrong.

AI: Now how did you get sick? What was happening to your health?

KM: Well, I was getting so run down that I had to have iron shots and things, 'cause you know, you're not happy.

AI: It must've been very difficult.

KM: It was really, well there was a period that I was eighty-five pounds. And, but I just kept going, kept going, 'cause I said, "I feel like I have to go take care of my husband. I have to go take" -- you know, that was my duty. So that's what kept me going. But it was really a hard period. And anyway somebody gave me a book of Daughter in Bondage. And I read that and I really said, "Hey, this is my life." [Laughs]

AI: Wow. That is so interesting, because you had said that your mother, before you got married, when your mother had gone to visit, she came back and said that she didn't think...

KM: Yeah, yeah...

AI: ...you would fit in with the family.

KM: ...yeah, yeah. She said that I just didn't fit into that family. There's a lot, lots more, but you know, I mean that's all buried now. I mean I've forgotten it. Yeah.

AI: And so you didn't want to -- you also didn't want to...

KM: So, you know, I just, when I, when Paul and Janis got married, that was one thing was my prayer that I would not repeat that kind of a daughter-in-law, mother-in-law relation. I mean it really taught me a lesson, because I suffered. Yeah. But then now, I'm real happy now. [Laughs] 'Course I've lost my husband, I'm lonely, but then still I have good memories of him. And I always thanked him for being the way he turned out in spite of the way he was raised. Because, oh, if he was raised that way, I saw everything he would have been a bitter, bitter man. But he was a good, I mean such a honest, that's what, that's what turns him against his mother more, after he found out that she was telling all these lies. Even to Japan, when we visited, all these uncles and aunts told us, "Is it true?" And so we said, "We were just surprised." And so that's why my mother-in-law, she had her own group of friends. And every time we'd go by that kind of friend, they would just look at us as if, "Hmm," 'cause you know, they saw her side of the story. But I always, Jack and I both felt that God has the straight story, and that's all that matters, so we just kept it to ourself. But it was hard.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.