<Begin Segment 40>

AI: When was that that you finally returned back?

KM: November of '45.

AI: November.

KM: Just one month after the baby was born.

AI: And what was the condition of their property, their house and their farm?

KM: Well by the time we came home, they came home midsummer, before the crop was gathered. And so they more or less had it all fixed. And so the house and everything was pretty much the way it was before we left. So they got that year's crop full.

AI: So in some ways they were fortunate when they came back?

KM: Yeah, in a way. Compared to our parents, their work and their business and everything. They were really, they had income coming in all that, during the war, although it was only 40 percent and the rest, the people that ran it got 60 percent. But at least our farm, or the property was there.

AI: So, after you got back in November, then I, it sounds like both you and Jack, your health was not too good.

KM: Yeah, yeah.

AI: You had the kidney poisoning...

KM: Yeah, I had, uh-huh.

AI: ...Jack was still kind of recovering.

KM: Yeah, yeah. And so, and then that following January, my mother was living in, they were living in Clovis. And then she had her shogatsu food. And then that night she started to have the diarrhea. And she had diarrhea for about ten days. And the doctors just couldn't find what was wrong with her. And so, because they weren't a resident of Fresno County, she couldn't go into the county hospital. And so the doctor that was in charge, who's a Japanese doctor, he said that there's a Japanese hospital right around his office that was closed during the war. He said, "I'll get a special permission to get it opened so we can put her in a hospital." By then she was so thin that, one day when she got better she was looking in the mirror and she said, "Who is that lady across where I am? She looks like a yurei," you know, ghost, "she's so skinny and everything." [Laughs] And she was looking at her own self. [Laughs] And she just lived on popsicles. That was only thing that settled in her stomach. But we, to this day we don't know what was wrong, but she eventually got well. And so during that time I had to go and take care of her and then my mother, stepmother took care of my little baby that was just one month old. And well, he had a little piggy bank. And we used to always put our loose change in there after we went grocery shopping. And then when my mother got well, and she got discharged and we were looking at all the things, that bank was empty. Isn't that something? A grandmother doing that to the... well, that's the kind it was. And then people would give us gift for the baby. And then my aunt and uncle bought us a crib, and then my sister-in-law bought us the mattress. And so we said, "We better go and buy some sheets." And then my mother-in-law said, "Oh, I got some sheet left over when Jack was a baby." Now Jack, when he was a baby, he didn't have fitted sheets. And so somebody had given it to her and she had it hidden away. And then she gave it to me at the right time, but I don't know who gave a gift to us. See? Oh, I tell you, so many things happened.

AI: Oh my. And so one thing happened after another. You came back from camp and then soon after your mother was ill. Then you had the, little John was just a little infant...

KM: Yeah, yeah.

AI: ...and you're still living with Jack's parents...

KM: So you know what my husband did? Because the doctor said, "You can only have a part-time job." He went around different places and asked the people for bronzing their baby shoes. And that's how he made his little income.

AI: And then you started up dressmaking again?

KM: Yeah, I did. Uh-huh. After the baby was about a year old and Jack could handle it. And then he did all my covered buttons and buckles as I sewed. And then our first son says I, when Jack passed away and he was giving his remembrance of his dad, he says, "I still remember Dad making buckles, covered buckles and buttons for Mama." And then even if it was, woman's liberation wasn't then, soon as we had dinner, he says, "I remember Dad going to the sink and washing the dishes so that Mama could finish up her sewing." He remembered all that. I was really surprised. [Laughs]

AI: So even as a little boy he...

KM: Yeah.

AI: ...saw what his dad...

KM: Uh-huh. They're very observing.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.