<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So I think at this point is about the time you met your wife in Toronto, I believe. So tell me about that, how did you meet your wife?

MO: Well... how I met my wife?

TI: Yes.

MO: Well... [laughs].

TI: And as you're thinking about this, what was your wife's name, her maiden name?

MO: Eiko Iwashita. She's from Edmonton, actually. She went to the University of (Alberta in Edmonton) and graduated a dietician.

TI: But she was originally from also the coast, too, right?

MO: She was from Vancouver.

TI: Vancouver, right, and then the war, she moved east and got to Toronto.

MO: I think she went to, during the war, she went to Edmonton to live with a Japanese family. Her dad was picked up by the Mounties right after the war broke out, and he was sent to some camp there in Ontario someplace. He was picked up because he had a business with Japan in Vancouver before the war. So I think he got picked up by the Mounties right when the war broke out, and they sent him away. So my wife's mother was my wife and two other girls, and they didn't know what to do when they had to move out. So they relocated to Edmonton with a Japanese family there before the war, so they lived with them.

TI: I see. And that's where your wife went to college?

MO: Yeah. And that's where she went to the University of Alberta.

TI: Alberta, okay. And then how did she get to Toronto?

MO: Well, she got a job with a Toronto hospital, I think.

TI: I see. So she was in the medical field, was she a nurse or doctor?

MO: Yeah, (she was a hospital dietician).

TI: So she's in Toronto and you're in Toronto, so how did the two of you meet?

MO: Well, we were both going to church and that. There was a lot activity going on with the YWCA.

TI: Okay, so it was kind of through these social activities that you would get to know each other. And so how did you start dating? Did you ask her out or did she ask you? How did that happen?

MO: Well... I don't know... how we met? I think we met when we were both going to a young people's club and that.

TI: Yeah, I'm just curious in terms of Toronto, I think of it as a resettlement community where all these Japanese Canadians are doing this. Just getting a sense of the social...

MO: Yeah, lot of social events. My wife used to be singer, she liked singing.

BY: So did you hear her sing and that was it?

MO: Hmm?

BY: Did you hear her sing and then that was it?

MO: No. [Laughs]

TI: So, Mak, part of this, we're doing this, a hundred years from now, your great-great grandchildren are going to see this, and they're going say, "How did Great Grandpa Mak meet Grandma, Great Grandma?" So these are kind of the stories, I think, for families, are really, really precious. So any stories about you dating your wife and what that was like in Toronto. Did you ever take her to a special restaurant?

MO: Wow, you're... [laughs].

TI: And if we're asking too many questions, you can tell us to stop, too. I like these kind of questions. And so how long did you live in Toronto?

MO: I lived in Toronto?

TI: Yeah.

MO: Let's see.

TI: Because you got married in 1954, and so how much longer after you got married did you keep working?

MO: I worked to '57.

TI: Okay, so about three more years.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.