<Begin Segment 17>

DG: Well, back to finishing up grad school. You did so and then you came back to Seattle?

NS: To Seattle, uh-huh. There wasn't any work-related employment at that time and opening. There were only three Japanese churches that employed religious educators so I didn't get a job. So, I came home.

DG: And this is in San Francisco you were saying that there was no job?

NS: No, the school is in Berkeley, but the jobs were -- there was one in Los Angeles, San Francisco...

DG: Oh, I see.

NS: ...and Seattle. And Seattle had a California girl and San Francisco -- oh, no, San Francisco didn't have any girls. I just helped with the Sunday school there. And then Los Angeles, there was a YWCA there where girls...

DG: So you were maybe twenty-one or twenty-two about, by this time?

NS: Yes, I was twenty-one then.

DG: So was marriage something that you were looking at, at all?

NS: No, I wasn't looking at marriage at all.

DG: Was your mother looking at marriage?

NS: Oh, probably. You know how mothers are. After you've graduated college, why, they think that you should get married soon afterwards.

DG: Did you date?

NS: What?

DG: Did you do some dating?

NS: Oh, I used to, but then not seriously.

DG: So then you came back. So that would be what year, about '35, '34 maybe?

NS: '34, and then I was home just one year. Then I got married in '35.

DG: So, what were the circumstances?

NS: Well, I had known Paul before. I had met him -- when we were in Japan, we saw each other when I was in Japan. Then he was in at the College of Puget Sound, and he used to come over for the Young People's meetings and we would go to Tacoma for Young People's meetings.

DG: Is this YPCC?

NS: Yes.

DG: That stands for what?

NS: Young People's Christian Conference.

DG: That was quite the place to get together.

NS: That's right, with all the different areas: we were in Yakima and Tacoma and Seattle. We hadn't quite gotten to Portland at that time.

DG: Well, Kaoro Ichihara, is that...

NS: Kaoro Ichihara?

DG: She was pretty active in that.

NS: Not too much. She might have been, but -- she might have been interested in it, but she wasn't one to take any leadership part.

DG: Who were some of the organizers of...

NS: Of the YPCC? Well, there were a lot of attendees, people who always went to those things. But people who took leadership parts in it were few. Mostly the Young People's workers that were hired by the churches that did the leadership portions then and the Young People's ministers at that time.

DG: And that was an inner church...

NS: Inner church thing.

DG: ...organization.

NS: Uh-huh.

DG: I've seen some pictures.

NS: Yes.

DG: My father used to go to them.

NS: Uh-huh. And it was a good meeting place for a lot of the young people at that time.

DG: Then you didn't work during that year then that you came home?

NS: Yes, I did. I think I worked with the Japanese -- what year was that? I think that was the year Japanese Chamber of Commerce -- or was that afterwards?

DG: I'm not sure.

NS: I think there was a period there where I did, but there were so few. I did take a course in welfare work.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.