<Begin Segment 8>

VY: Maybe now is a good time to talk about your wife and how you met.

KI: Well, first of all, I was raised that you should marry another Japanese woman, or another Japanese person. But I went to college and I met my wife at the University of Oregon, and I'm, if you will, not the hippest person. You know, not the person who knows the great line about, "I love the way you look," or whatever it is that boys could hook into a woman, that wasn't me. And I had not developed that sensibility of stalking females, if you will. But we met and I liked her, she liked me, and the surprise of all things is she was Jewish. And I said, "Oh, what's a Jew?" [Laughs] And she says, "I can't tell you in one conversation. It's a whole lifetime of issues." I said, "Oh, that's interesting." Well, we became friends and I wrote to her, she wrote to me, and six years later, I wrote to her and says, "I like you." [Laughs] In a letter. And she says, "Oh, I wondered."

VY: Six years, that's a long time.

KI: Hmm?

VY: Six years is a long time.

KI: Well, I'm slow. I don't have the quick finger of, "Hey, kid, what a beaut you are." [Laughs] So she was the love of my life. And she was so endearing to me, and when I moved to California, we moved near her family. I really became involved in a Jewish-Jewish family. I don't mean religiously Jewish but I mean culturally Jewish. Where people use Yiddish phrases and talk about the goy. I said, "Gee, am I a goy?" "Oh, nah." [Laughs] At any rate, the point is, we had a relationship where it was a culture where people talk. I don't come from a family where people talk. If you talk, you sort of beat around the bush. You do everything indirectly, but to be just straightforward and just tell you how things are would not be the case. Well, I soon learned that you got to be pretty straightforward. I became Jewish in a manner of speaking. [Laughs]

VY: Was that a hard adjustment or was it a welcome adjustment?

KI: No, it was wonderful because it was a very welcoming family. And oh my goodness, all the positive emotions and relationships, it was like, if I could put this way, finding a basket of wonderful fruit. [Laughs]

VY: That's wonderful.

KI: Yeah, her family was great.

VY: Did your Japanese American side of the family ever get together with your new family?

KI: Kind of, in a way. But Seattle and California are separate places, and there are not a lot of occasions for making the plans, if I can put it that way. But I really loved her family, and they're still a part of my life. So I'm not being a traitor to Japanese people or anything, but it's an embracing of, if you will, joy, life. And part of it has to do with understanding your own emotions and fears. Because if you don't do that, then the troubles come back over and over. But then again, maybe I've been brainwashed into another world. [Laughs]

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.