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PW: So how long do you think they stayed in Heart Mountain?

EH: We moved in 1944, I think it was. Yes, what happened was, in 1944, the war was winding down. And you could leave the camp if you went east, away from the West Coast. You couldn't go back to the West Coast, like to California or to Oregon or Washington. But you can go east, and so my dad had decided he wanted to go to graduate school. And in the Methodist church, there were two universities that had seminaries. And one was in SMU, which is in Texas. But they felt that, at that time, Texas was a little bit too, what's the word? It was a little dangerous to go to Texas. And the other university was Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. And so that's where he decided to attend, so he applied and got accepted. And so we moved to Boston, the Boston area, in 1944.

PW: When you say dangerous, because of the climate? Because of the war, and the family, and Japanese American, or were you saying something else?

EH: It's because the South was a little anti-Asian at that time, but mostly anti-Japanese. I'm sure it was also for other Asian people also, Chinese and Filipinos and maybe Indians, I don't know. "Redneck" is what I was trying to say. Probably a little dangerous to go there.

PW: So the decision was made to go to Massachusetts?

EH: Yes, and so we went to Boston, Massachusetts.

PW: And so he enrolled into this graduate, was it a theological school?

EH: Yes, it was a seminary at Boston University.

PW: And how old were you about that time?

EH: Six. Because I started kindergarten or first grade over there, so it was just about five or six that I was...

PW: And where did you live when you first got to Massachusetts?

EH: Well, first there was a Japanese boarding house that were taking Japanese people, immigrants. And we stayed there for a while, but then the university had a hospitality committee that would find places for the students to live. And at that time, it was a little tough for Japanese to find places that were willing to accept Japanese citizens or Japanese immigrants. So several of the places that we lived were ministers that were going to that university. They were ministers that were already finished school, they were working, and they had a church or something. But also, we lived with some of the professors from the different universities in the area, or just people that were willing to take immigrants, or people that would be able to work as a cook or as a gardener, things like that, domestic service.

PW: Do you remember any of the families or the places that you had lived?

EH: Oh, yeah, I remember most of it, yeah. Especially as I grew older, there was several that I remember quite a bit. The first one was... do we have time for it? The first was we lived in this town called Lexington, which is one of the towns in Massachusetts. But the couple were professors at Harvard, and they were both in the field of astronomy. And Mr. Gaposchkin, their name was Gaposchkin, Mr. Gaposchkin was an immigrant from Russia, but he was teaching at Harvard. And his wife was an immigrant from England, and she was also a professor. She was very well known internationally, but they were willing to take us in, and so we lived there for a while. That was very interesting there. And over the years, we kept a little bit in contact. One of the sons came out to California when we were living in California, and he went to UC Berkeley, so we got to meet him. And then he passed away about ten or fifteen years ago. His sister came out for the funeral, and so we got to meet her again.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.