<Begin Segment 8>

JN: Your brother, Tosh, served in the... during the war. Do you remember what that, how that affected your family? What were some of the conversations, being that he was the only son and he was going to fight in the war?

YY: You know, I really can't remember. Now Kay thought he volunteered, but I don't think so. I think by that time they were, it was a draft. But I can't remember exactly and Kay was already married too, by that time. Because, I think she just had gotten married. But anyway, he went in and he went to boot camp and then he went to Military Intelligence at Fort Snelling. It wasn't too many months after that that he became ill. He contracted TB. And so of course then that was a medical discharge and he was sent to the VA hospital. That's the same thing that happened to my husband too. He was at that same school and he came down with TB and got sent to the same hospital and that's where they met, my brother and Bob met there on the same circumstances. But in those days TB was like a death sentence and that's what upset my parents the most, that they thought he would be forever, have this chronic illness and all that. So that was their worry. However, as time went on -- and he was gone about three years, you know, in those days. Bob too, they were hospitalized for a long time. It was mainly rest, good food, and then medication was just coming on to treat it. They had to take pills or whatever. Now it's a different story. But in those days... and then the Japanese had, especially the Isseis, the fear of the illness, thinking that the whole family was gonna get it. It is contagious, but with isolation, with proper care, everyone doesn't have to catch it. So that kind of changed their, my parents' thinking, and at least they weren't worried about him going to the front lines and gettin' killed or maimed. So his story is a little different. And then coming back to my brother, people knew him as Paul. But you know, he had converted to becoming a Catholic. So he took on Paul as his baptism name, so that's how he got the name. Then when he was confirmed, he took the name Joseph, so he was Paul Joseph, Toshio Paul Joseph Sakai. Yeah, and his girlfriend at the time was Catholic and that's how he converted. But he did not marry that person. You know, of course he married Kim later on.

JN: After the war, what did your family do? What was it like when you returned? You kind of mentioned that already, and how you were treated, and... what, besides the fact that you couldn't live in your own home for a while, did they eventually get all their property back and did anybody help them along the way?

YY: Fortunately we stored a lot of things in one of the rooms upstairs. So we didn't have a storage problem and the lady didn't touch it or anything. She just mainly just kept to her area, and so that was not a problem for us. Because we owned the property, we had a place to come home to, whereas a lot of people did not. They were leasing their property and were not able to come back. So in a lot of ways we were fortunate in that way.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.