Densho Digital Archive - Rae Takekawa Interview (denshovh-trae-01-0036)

<Begin Segment 36>

AI: Now, sometime along here you met your husband-to-be. How did that happen? How did you meet him?

RT: [Laughs] My "husband-to-be." Well, I didn't meet him out in the beet fields even though we had to clean up his beets.

AI: Can you tell about that?

RT: Oh, that. Yes, yes. This is his "claim to fame" thing. He was with a six-man crew. I mean, man. They were all athletes and gung-ho types, I guess. Anyway, he was out in Chinook for heaven's sakes, in 1942. And we didn't know this for, until after we were married, probably many years, but he was in Chinook as part of a beet-topping crew at the same time we were. And at the time, he was topping at this farm, and they decided to pull up stakes and to go back to camp because the weather had turned -- meaning it was snowing again -- and the crop was so poor.

Now, beets, you expect them to be like the size of a loaf of bread, but very heavy, of course. These were like carrots. And my brother and I have decided that there's no way that those beets should have been topped. They should have just left them. But they went back to camp, and because our employer, Mr. Blatter, was somehow related to Mr. Wadsworth, he had us go and clean up this field that this six-man crew left. And lo and behold, he was on that crew. Of course, he didn't know that we had to clean up his beets, and we did. And I remember that field was so bad, and not only that, but it was I think about October 30th or 31st, and it had snowed, so the field was snow-covered, and we had to go grubbing around for those beets.

Anyway, so I didn't meet my husband until 19... I would say '48 maybe. I was in school and there were quite a few Japanese American kids, and they would have socials. Well, since I didn't have any parents to say "no," I met him at a dance, and there he was. Of course, I didn't know him from Adam except, of course, he had this connection to Bellevue because his mother had taught school in Bellevue, and eventually you get to know these things. So eventually we found out about that beet field, yeah. But I met him at a dance. Yeah. He was not going to school then, but he started school at the age of twenty-eight. He was having trouble finding a job, and of course, they had the GI bill, and so he started school. So, that would make it '49 that he started school. And by that time I had gone out to teach, in 1949.

AI: And then when did you get married?

RT: We got married in 1950, a real good year to remember. You know what I mean. [Laughs] He can't make an excuse that he doesn't know what year we got married. Anyway, we got married in 1950 in August at my folks' farm.

AI: Out in Chinook.

RT: Out in Chinook, yeah. We got married there. And he, his mother, and his second brother all came out, and one of my friends came out to be my maid of honor. So that's where we got married, and my mother had a reception right there in the house. Now, by this time, of course, they had bought the Lundeen farm and so they were living in the house that the Lundeens had, which was a nice house.