<Begin Segment 18>
DG: So now you're married. Tell us a little bit about your husband's background.
NS: Are you on now? He came to the United States after he finished his middle school, I guess, or high school, or whatever it was in Japan. He came because his uncle and aunt adopted him in Tacoma. In the summertime he worked in the canneries and worked as a schoolboy at the home of Mr. and Mrs. W.W. Seymour -- at one time he was mayor of the city of Tacoma.
DG: The Seymours were?
NS: The Seymours. (Mr. Seymour was mayor of Tacoma at this time.) But he was a schoolboy there and went to -- I think he was a schoolboy all the time he was in grade school, I mean high school and college. And he went four years to Stadium High School, graduated, and then went to College of Puget Sound. And all the time he was schoolboy for the Seymours, and they treated him very well. He had use of the car when -- she would come to Seattle often for things and so he would drive her. Those were the times when I would see him when he came to Seattle. And then I don't know how he got into Creighton, but most of the coastal medical schools were closed to Japanese; and, I think there always was a quota or limit to the number of Japanese accepted in medical school. So he went where he was accepted and, therefore, it was Creighton.
DG: And that's where?
NS: That's in Omaha, Nebraska. There was no, there was no one else from the Northwest here. There was a Japanese, a couple of Japanese boys from Hawaii, another from Los Angeles, and one from San Francisco at the time that he was going to Creighton. But that was in the four years that he was there. Omaha was -- you want me to talk about Omaha?
DG: Sure.
NS: Omaha had very few Japanese people. There was a variety store, like a lot of other small towns, and that was where I met Yoshiko Akamatsu. Do you know the Akamatsus here in Seattle?
DG: Heard of the name.
NS: And she was from Seattle, Yoshiko.
DG: Now, you were -- right.
<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.