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BY: So it sounds like, after the war, your parents moved or ended up in Des Moines, Iowa. So did you grow up there, or where did you grow up?

CH: Oh, yes. They ran out of gas on Twenty-seventh and Forest, and then they found an apartment on Twenty-seventh. And then a few years later they found a home on Twenty-third, and that's where I was born, at Lutheran Hospital, and came back to that home in Des Moines.

BY: And I'm imagining that, at that time, there were not very many, if any, Japanese Americans living in Des Moines.

CH: There was a few. There were a few families, and so my parents knew, connected with people. The Takas, who were the Takayanagis but became the Takas. He was a watch repairman in Des Moines. The Yoshidas, the Izumis, there was a handful, the Unos, maybe about ten families.

BY: And did they live in the same neighborhood that you lived in?

CH: Oh, no.

BY: Okay. And what was the neighborhood that you grew up? What was your neighborhood like?

CH: So my neighborhood was very near Drake University. So I would walk to grade school, which was, now it's a part of the Drake University campus called Kirkwood Elementary, and then went to middle school further away, but I still walked, we still were doing that, and then to North High School in Des Moines.

BY: And so it sounds like your family had Japanese American friends, but in your neighborhood and your school, who were your friends?

CH: In my neighborhood, you know, kids used to play outside, so we'd play with the neighborhood kids, and Dad would whistle to come home. Sometimes I went into their house, but not usually. Usually we played outside. And then in grade school... I mean, I can remember it was kind of hard at times, because I got teased about my eyes or about different things. I had a Bluebird leader when I was, I think, in second grade, but got really angry and called me a "Jap" and said I should go home. That's kind of when I asked my mom, "What is a 'Jap'?" And she, a little embarrassingly, she tried to explain it to me. But yeah, that girl and I fought all through grade school, middle school. We went to different high schools, but it was a German family and they did not like us at all.

BY: So what was the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood that you grew up in then?

CH: There were a few African Americans, but mostly Caucasian.

BY: And no Asians except your family?

CH: Oh, zero, no. I think the only Asians that were in my school were Chinese. So all the other people that I knew were older than I. They were either in high school or college by then, and then the ones, there's just a few, maybe three that were my age that I would see when our families would visit, or one woman, Suzie Sakata was a seamstress and she would make all my, a junior high dress and fancy clothes, and she would hand sew them, hand design them.

BY: So it sounds like you had maybe two sets of friends then, your school friends in your, the Japanese American families?

CH: Yes, I had just really a couple friends that there was another nurse there in Des Moines that my mom became good friends with, and she had a daughter a little bit younger than me.

BY: Okay.

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