<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Okay, going back to your case, you had... if you had passed that final semester, you would have had enough credits to have graduated from high school. It was that point where you were, reaching the point of being sixteen so you could leave the camps. As well as they were planning to, to allow people to leave the camps and return to the West Coast at this point. So all these things were, were coming together. You didn't pass that final semester with, with the flunking of Miss...

HM: Amerman's...

TI: Miss Amerman's class. So I guess the question is, so what happened after, come spring? Did you leave camp or what happened?

HM: Okay. Well after I got my sixteen, sixteenth birthday then I decided I was going back to Seattle and try to get the one house that we had left, try to get that thing ready for my parents to come.

TI: At this point were you considering going back to school to finish your high school?

HM: No, that was the furthest from my mind. I was gonna go, go to work. Because my parents were pretty old at that point and it would have been pretty hard for my father to start working again. So my first objective was to find work and at least get my parents comfortable in the house.

TI: At this point, I mean in terms of your formal education. You, you're, you're a very bright individual.

HM: But that doesn't mean anything at that point. I used to see these top level graduates not being able to get a job like, Yamasaki who was that foremost architect and -- he used to live at Fir Apartments, it's a block away from us -- and he graduated very high in his honors, graduate, class at the University of Washington, but he couldn't get a job. A lot of these things that, that even though people were bright or had good records didn't mean a thing. So I, I was quite realistic at that point. And I figured well, Mr. Takeuchi who used to be one of our tenants in the one of the houses we used to have and he offered me a job in his gardening thing. And he had gone back to Seattle earlier and he had a gardening operation and he wanted me to help him. So I said, you know, I'll go to work for him. And he says, "Fine. You can cut lawns for me." So I was ready to go. And I did. In fact the second day after I got back to Seattle. Well, first day Mr. Takeuchi came around, and after work, and then he came around to see if, how I was doing. So he says, "Well, come on over for supper." and I ate supper at his place and he says, "Tomorrow morning let, you start. Get some grubby clothes on and you're gonna cut lawns." So, I just cut lawns. [Laughs]

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.