<Begin Segment 14>

PW: Tell me when and where did you meet your partner?

EH: My partner?

PW: Your wife.

EH: I was working at this pharmacy in San Francisco, and we used to hire these students from pharmacy school, interns. Because you need to work so many hours in the pharmacy before, to get your license. You had to have experience. So one of the interns that I hired was a Chinese (American) girl from Sacramento. She and my best friend in pharmacy school kind of hooked up. And she had a friend who went to Cal with her, that was living in Los Angeles and used to come up to visit. So she came up, and so they needed somebody to be an escort for her, and that turned out to be me and that's how we met. She's not Japanese American, she's Jewish American, and that's how I got involved in the Jewish faith.

PW: Again, she was from Los Angeles, is that correct?

EH: Yes.

PW: So she would have to come and visit you?

EH: Well, yeah. So she used to visit her friend in Sacramento, or she'd come up once in a while and then so I would see her once in a while and then she came up a few times and we met in San Francisco, and that's how that got started. I don't know if I ever went down to see her in L.A., but I don't remember. [Narr. note: I went to see her in and went to L.A. twice.]

PW: And what is her name?

EH: Her name is Joan.

PW: What was her maiden name?

EH: Wilson.

PW: Wilson?

EH: Yes.

PW: And you got married in what year?

EH: 1968.

PW: And where did you get married?

EH: In Los Angeles. And it was, she got a rabbi to do part of the ceremony, and then my dad helped with part of the ceremony. So it was kind of a bi-, what do you call it, bi-religious ceremony, little bit of each.

PW: Was it held in a religious building or was it like...

EH: No, it was at a, not a community center, but it was a... it was like a town hall, I can't remember exactly what it was. [Narr. note: It was at Sportsman's Lodge, a hotel and dining room in Studio City, California.]

PW: And how did your parents feel about this, you marrying outside of the Japanese...

EH: My parents were open to it because my older, my sister Nancy had married a Caucasian fellow before that, before I did. And I guess her parents were not real happy in the beginning, but they accepted it. But at that time, it was not as prevalent as maybe it is now, but it seemed to work. And I never had any trouble getting jobs or anything because of that.

PW: You said it was the beginning of your involvement in the Jewish faith. Can you tell me more about that?

EH: Well, no, it's just that I was more, not involved in the faith so much, but I was just aware of people that were Jewish. The turmoil that they had suffered over the years, especially starting with the Holocaust. All the racism or anti-religious feelings that the Jewish people have gotten, and even now, it's still very prominent. But it's the same with the racism with anti-Blacks, and now especially the last couple years against Asians, anti-Asian things, which I think was a little political, but that's beside the point. And then now, also it's anti-Muslim. Those things bother me, but I'm not sure how we can fix those things.

PW: Did you and your wife have children?

EH: Yes, so we had two children.

PW: And their names and when they were born?

EH: [Laughs] I can't tell you the dates of that, but the children are Stephanie (November 20, 1970), and her middle name is Tomoko, and her last name is Fong now, she's married. And her husband is, I don't know if you want his name, too, but his name is Gaetano Fong. He is half Japanese and half Chinese. So my daughter is half Japanese and half Caucasian, and then they have two children. So the children are also half Japanese and a quarter Chinese and a quarter Caucasian. And then I have a son, his name is Gregory, and his middle name is (Howard Yoshito, March 13, 1973). And he's married to a Caucasian girl, her name is Heather, and they have two children, two girls, and one's name is Payton and the other one is named Kayla, and I don't know if they have middle names, but I don't know that for sure.

PW: Where did you raise your children? At that time, when the babies were born and you were building your family, where were you living?

EH: The kids were both born in the Berkeley area. But after a couple years, we decided to move, so we moved from there to the Danville area, which is outside of Walnut Creek. And so they were both raised in (...) the Danville area up through high school. And now, one of them lives in Dublin and one lives in El Cerrito, so all of them are local in the area.

PW: Yeah, pretty close.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.