Densho Digital Archive - Rae Takekawa Interview (denshovh-trae-01-0037)

<Begin Segment 37>

AI: So by that time, they had decided to settle there in Chinook and stay there, rather than return back out to Bellevue.

RT: Yes, that decision had been made. After the war had ended, I'm sure they went through a lot of discussion as to what should happen. And by that time, they had bought the farm, I think. I mean, in the process of buying the farm.

AI: And then where did you and your husband decide to live?

RT: Oh, well, we lived in Minneapolis because this is where he was going to school. His mother and his younger brother were both there. And, so he's the oldest in the family, no father, and so, of course, it's his responsibility. The family is his responsibility. So his mother and his younger brother and Dutch and I all lived together in an apartment in Minneapolis. That's how we started out. Yeah.

AI: Now, tell me about your children.

RT: Oh, we have four, and as I say, we had the first one, Anne, in '51, and Beth in '53, Jean in '54, and John came around '57. So I know that we had four kids within the space of five and a half years. So they're all close in age and also close, they are very close to each other. They grew up together, that's what it is. But they were all raised in Minneapolis, and I think it's a very, very good place to raise a family. It's a, the quality of life, as they say, they're willing to pay for it, and I think we were fortunate that we were there.

AI: And I think you mentioned also that during the summers you would go back.

RT: Oh, yes. Well, that was our vacation. Every summer we would take our children, and we would go back to Montana. We would, actually, we would go camping, because that was what we could afford, to go take a vacation by camping. And in those days, they didn't charge the fees that they do nowadays. You know, campgrounds even are getting higher. But in those days you could camp free in a lot of these places, and we had this big, big Montgomery Ward tent that was heavy. Anyway, we did enjoy that, and to this day, the kids all like camping. But part of the vacation, usually at the end, we would go to Chinook and visit my folks because they stayed in Montana. And in fact, my father lived in Montana the longest of any of the places that he lived. And we would go to Montana and our kids would enjoy the farm life. Yeah, it was something that they still remember very fondly.