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TL: Could you tell me a little bit about how you see your marriage with George as different from your relationship with Clarence?

YB: I think having married earlier in my younger years, life was very different. The adjustment takes place first, and then the problem of a mother-in-law that I had, which never bothered to give me any bad time really, and there was a younger sister that we had to be concerned about. And then he had two younger sisters, and a brother who was on his own. And his sister was a school girl, and they'd come over on weekends to visit us, but eventually she came in to stay with us, so that was okay. And then, before we left for -- before we evacuated from Seattle, Mother came, and the youngest sister came, and stayed with us; and Clarence was very strict with the young sister. "You don't stay out at midnight. Be home before midnight." And Mother would protect her by unlocking the door so she could sneak in at 12:00. [Laughs] She wasn't helping matters any. And then there would be a little argument there and said, "You're not helping matters any, just making it worse for her." But eventually she did marry, she married a young Spanish boy in California.

But Clarence's marriage and mine together, I managed okay. I had to struggle a lot because being the first lawyer, and not that many Japanese, and they weren't all well-to-do so whatever they'd pay him, he wouldn't push 'em into how much. And they'd call him on the phone and get free advice, or most of 'em would charge for everything, even over the phone, and Clarence wouldn't so they'd call him on the telephone. And then when they would come to the office, and be charged, they'd give him a hard luck story and then he'd cut it down to nothing practically. [Laughs] So I used to get some little side work to add to whatever income we needed.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.