<Begin Segment 28>

LH: Now, after your father is trying to get an income going, and your mother is also working, did he ever express any bitterness about having lost his property and belongings?

MS: I think to his friends. When the Isseis get together as they did, and when they come to visit, I could overhear snatches of that. But they never expressed it to us. I guess they felt that it wouldn't do any good and that we have to take life and try to make something better out of it. So they didn't want us to feel bitter about things. So I have to admit they were good about not turning us against our government.

LH: How about his interactions with the greater community? He used to work in the University District amongst non-Japanese Americans. But what was his attitude at this point about non-Japanese Americans?

MS: Well, he had to work among them because that's the only place the jobs were available. That's why a lot of the Japanese Isseis went into trying to get a little business of their own, grocery stores, laundries, restaurants, where they didn't have to necessarily depend on catering all the time because, yeah, they had to cater to the non-Japanese public and do their bidding. I'm sure he didn't like being a cook but that was the only job that he could do at the time. My mother also, she used to kid a lot about being a cleaning lady, but that's all she could do. But she used to tell me about how it was to do that sort... therefore, they both stressed that we must get an education, and that's the only way we can ever get beyond this. So that was always in their minds that I would go to college, in fact, all of us would go to college. But my two older brothers didn't go, so I was the last one, and they said I have to go. And so I had no choice in that, and I had to go to college.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.