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YN: Fortunately we were young enough that... my husband had to take very menial jobs. He was just, he just graduated high school when we went into camp. And when we came out of camp, we were married, had a one-year-old child. My husband had a scholarship to Dartmouth, and he wanted to become a doctor. When we got back, he couldn't find any job. I told him that it's easier for a woman to get a job so I will go and work, and I wanted him to go to college. And my husband replied that, "I have a wife and a child to support," and he'll take any kind of a job. And so he sacrificed, and he took a job opening oysters; he had never ever done that kind of thing before. There was, the former person that he used to work for as a houseboy, was a wealthy, influential community leader in Tacoma. And he had a big plumbing supply company and did want to hire him to work in the company, but the union was so strong they didn't want any Japanese. And so he says, "I'm sorry, but I can't even give you a job." And that's the reason why he found out that they were looking for Japanese to open oysters piecemeal, and he went and didn't know how and he learned how. Came home every night with his fingers all cut.

TL: Well, this is a question for your sons. I'm wondering, as you're listening to your mom, you know, remember these early years, clearly you weren't born or you were quite young, but how does that fit with your earliest memories of your father, and perhaps expectations and hopes that he had for you?

KN: I think that's a part of this anger that I had growing up, that he didn't ever get the opportunity to go to college. And that was so stressed on us as three sons of doing well in school and going through college; I mean, that was his number one thing, that we all had to do well. But that's probably one of things that makes me the most angry, that he didn't have the opportunity to go to university.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.