<Begin Segment 15>

BY: And during this time, then, you met your husband, your first husband?

DR: Uh-huh.

BY: So tell us a little bit about him. What was his name and how did you meet?

DR: His name was Franklin Hattori, just like Franklin Hattori here, the realtor, but this guy was from Pasadena, no relation at all. And he was a great guy. He was a great dancer, and that's what really attracted me to him. I love dancing. And I met him at a party, and he was an architect or a draftsmen at the time before he became an architect. He was just a very, very kind guy, just a lot of fun. And in high school, he was a gymnast. And there's this one photo that my daughter has now, he was doing the iron cross. Do you know what that is?

BY: Yeah, that takes a lot of strength.

DR: And he was just perfect. Oh my god, yeah, he was very strong. He was just a very, very nice person.

BY: And so you got married in L.A. or did you come home to get married?

DR: No, we got married in Las Vegas.

BY: Oh. [Laughs] And then after you were married, you stayed in L.A. then?

DR: Yeah. We were in, actually, a place called Carson, we bought a house in Carson. We lived in L.A. for about, oh, maybe a year. We decided, "Let's buy a house," so we bought a house.

BY: And that's in California?

DR: That's in Carson, yeah. That's in the South Bay.

BY: And so how did your life change after you got married?

DR: I don't think it changed very much.

BY: Were you still working at that point?

DR: No, he made me quit. He wanted me to stay home.

BY: Oh, how did you feel about that?

DR: I didn't like it. I wanted to go to school.

BY: You wanted to be a teacher, right?

DR: Yeah. Well, I didn't get a chance until later. But anyway, yeah, I had two kids.

BY: And what were their names?

DR: Teresa, T-E-R-E-S-A. It's actually Spanish, Teresa, she always says, "Teresa." I tell her, "No, that's not your name." She was born in '65, and then my son Kevin was born in '67.

BY: And so all during that time that they were growing up and you were home with them.

DR: Yeah.

BY: And were you feeling, how were you feeling about all of that?

DR: It was good. You know, it was really interesting. We moved to this neighborhood, this tract of homes, where mostly the Asian people that lived there were from Hawaii, and so they all spoke pidgin. Well, before we moved there, before I got married, I was working for a trucking company and there were a lot of Hawaiians that were working there. And so I learned how to speak fluent pidgin. So when I moved there, they (would speak) pidgin, so I'm in there speaking pidgin. And about three years after we had moved in there, I knew everybody and they all thought whatever they thought. Anyway, so this one friend said, "So where were you born?" And I said, "Seattle." And they said, "What part of Hawaii did you live in?" I said, "I never lived in Hawaii," I'd never been there. But it was too late for them to...

BY: Reject you?

DR: Reject me.

BY: Because you fit right in?

DR: That was really fun doing that.

BY: And that's when you were living in Carson?

DR: Uh-huh. And I don't know if you know the Matsudaira family, but Sappo, Mich's older brother, yeah, his older brother, he and his wife lived in Carson in that same tract. So we used to get together all the time.

BY: And so... well, maybe we'll get to that later.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.