<Begin Segment 17>

EG: How did your parents make out? What did they do, on coming back to Seattle?

PT: My father took whatever jobs he could get. And, of course, he never did go to college, and so he just had his high school education.

(Narr. note: My father's jobs included working as a cook at a nursing home and also outdoor maintenance for the Seattle Housing Authority. However, these jobs didn't pay too well. Therefore, he was constantly searching in the newspapers for a job opening for which he might qualify. One day, he came across an ad for a meat cutter at Bar-S. When he went to apply, he was told he was too small for the job. But being determined, he asked to work for one week without pay. At the end of the week, he did get the job and with pay. The company made a special platform for him to stand on so he could keep up with his co-workers in reaching up for the carcasses as they came down the assembly line. I know this was exhausting work, but he persevered for about five years to enable him to save some money toward his retirement. I recall his mentioning that he was perhaps the only Japanese American who worked in a meat cutting plant. One reason, other than the average smaller physical stature, was that in Japan only those considered outcasts known as the eta or burakumin worked as meat cutters. After leaving the meat cutting job, he worked as a building maintenance man until his retirement.

As for my mother, she resumed work at the Seattle Glove Factory sewing fabric and leather work gloves at piece work wages with no benefits. About four years before she retired, the Boss Manufacturing Company bought the Seattle Glove Factory. For the first time, my mother and her long-time co-workers received union wages and health and retirement benefits. But her thirty-three-year work record was not transferable to the new company. Therefore, with a four-year work record with the new firm, she retired with monthly benefits of only ten dollars. But she was still grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Davis, owners of the Seattle Glove Factory, saying that they provided employment to Japanese American Issei women who could not speak English and could not get other jobs.)

PT: And there was still a certain amount of discrimination in the community.

EG: What did you find along those lines?

PT: My experience was that I had a very close Filipino girlfriend from before the war, but after I returned, she was very unfriendly toward me. And I thought that was a sad thing to happen, but I imagine that possibly her relatives experienced unfortunate experiences when the Japanese soldiers were on the Philippine Islands, and I think maybe this influenced the way in which she reacted toward me. But I know that while we were living at the Japanese Language School, we wanted to find other quarters as soon as possible since we were sharing this classroom with the Kinoshita family. And so, housing was very difficult to find in those days. And, of course, the Japanese Americans still were not welcome in all areas of the city. And so we went to, my mother and I, in the evenings would walk around to the various hotels or apartments that were managed by Japanese Americans, to see if we could somehow find a vacancy. But that was very difficult.

EG: How long were you in the Japanese Language School, until you found other housing?

PT: Actually, I think it was less than six months because fortunately we were able to find a studio apartment, located just about a block from the Japanese Language School. And it was a studio apartment with, we did not have our own bathroom facility, but we were used to that. From there we moved to another apartment house that had one bedroom, and then from there we moved to another one. [Laughs] We just sort of kept moving around.

EG: Always in the same general area, though, always in Japantown?

PT: Yeah, always in the same general area, because I think my parents were more comfortable in this area.

EG: Japanese Town reestablished itself after the internment, pretty much.

PT: It did to a certain extent, but not to the same extent that it was established before the war. It was different.

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