Densho Digital Archive - Toru Sakahara - Kiyo Sakahara Interview I (denshovh-storu

<Begin Segment 14>

DG: Were there other Japanese in the community?

KS: Yeah, a few, about half a dozen families. There were no... there might have been one Japanese boy in my class, but not very many. The teacher told me that you're going to get out of the eighth grade and you have to think about high school, and the country high school that you'll go to in Poulsbo as yet does not have the subjects that you will need to go to University. So what you will have to do is either take the ferry and go to the Edmonds school every day or find some arrangement where you can go to Seattle and go to high school there. My mother had heard of this Reverend Murphy and his wife who did help quite a few Japanese gals get work in homes.

DG: What church were they associated with?

KS: She was associated with the Japanese Congregational Church, but I don't think he had any particular church that he worked with.

DG: So they helped girls.

KS: Yeah. She actually had sort of an employment agency, because the women in Seattle who needed help in their homes would call her and then she would find some Japanese girl that needed a home and place her there. I know that's how I got a place to live, and I started at Roosevelt High School and did well. Went home in the summer and helped the family. Then it was during my sophomore year that my father died, and so then it was really very sad for our family, because then I knew I could never go home again. It's just when the breadwinner is gone... so I stayed in Seattle and went to school and worked for this family, and then the year after that...

DG: You said you learned a lot of things.

KS: Oh yes. I learned how to cook and how to set a table, how to keep a house. I do thank this family because they were very good to me and I was able to go to a good school. In the next years after that, my next sister was thirteen or fourteen and she came into Seattle and worked for the lady that I worked for. Her brother and his family took my sister. And then when my next sister, it was the year after that, she came and I got her a job with one of the Clise's daughters. She had little...