<Begin Segment 25>

DG: Talking some more about the PTA, I was noticing the roster. You started in early '50s, and there were no Japanese involved, at that time, in that either.

NS: No.

DG: But later on in about 1960, I start noticing quite a few Japanese names, especially where there...

NS: I think it always needs somebody to break the ice, and I imagine that a lot of the young people feel that they don't want to because they'll be the first ones. Well, once the ice is broken, I think that people, maybe because they're Japanese, feel that I'm not the only one and can and would like to do something.

DG: Is it important to break the ice?

NS: I think it is. I mean, how else can you -- I mean, "Who else is going to do it," like my mother used to say. She says, "If you can do it, do it."

DG: What is she referring to, you can do it?

NS: Well, these activities that I would go to. There would be, there would be others, there wouldn't be too many others involved. And so I say, "Well, why should I do it," and she'd say, "Well, if you can do it and want to do it, then do it."

DG: Well, does it have to do with assimilation?

NS: I think so.

DG: Why is that important?

NS: Well, we live in a diverse community. And the more assimilation we have, the more understanding we'll have between the peoples. I think it's important to have an assimilation of talents and people and a sharing of ideas rather than being in a select group.

DG: And you understood this from early, it seems?

NS: I think that my mother instilled that to me a long time ago and that I've always practiced it as much as possible and that's why I came in here. [Laughs]

DG: Right. Here is where?

NS: Here is Park Shore where it's a retirement home; and, of course, it's a new idea -- It was a new idea ten and fifteen years ago that people retired into retirement homes, and they were built for retired people. And so I became -- well, I was on the board at Horizon House. Then I was on the state board association and read and knew about them. When my husband died and a year later, I decided that I needed to go into a different situation at that point in my life, why, I chose Horizon House to come to because -- I mean, I chose Park Shore, because I knew that it was closest to what I had, and I would enjoy being -- and I had friends here, too.

DG: Do you miss rice?

NS: What?

DG: Do you miss rice?

NS: Not particularly. I mean, not every day like the Japanese have. No. I adapt myself so that I can have it occasionally. Since I have a kitchen of my own, I can make it if I wanted to.

DG: But that adaptation takes an attitude, I think.

NS: The what?

DG: Takes an attitude, willingness to be...

NS: Oh, yes. Uh-huh. And one gets used to it.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.