<Begin Segment 9>

MW: When you... when you... when did you marry Norma? When were you married?

EH: '53.

MW: '53. And tell us about how you met her and where she was from.

EH: Well, when they built that Agate Pass bridge, and I like to tease my three daughters about going across the bridge, and Norma grabbing hold of me and wouldn't let me go home. [Laughs] But we met out at the Kingston Grange. She was working one summer at the navy yard, and she met Jim Tiffany. And Jim had dated her, and that's where I met her. And we used to all go out there and whoop it up.

MW: And she grew up in Poulsbo?

EH: Yeah.

MW: Which is about... well, now it's about fifteen minutes from Bainbridge with the bridge. But how long would it have taken you to get to Poulsbo from Bainbridge via the ferry?

EH: Oh, boy.

MW: It would be an hour?

EH: Well, I'd only been in Poulsbo by boat when we'd have excursions. And the school would charter the, I think it was a car, Lyle the second, the Port Orchard ferry, and then we'd go over. It was mainly football and basketball. And I think I went over there once too with the band.

MW: So the high school teams played each other.

EH: Yeah.

MW: But it wasn't as easy to get to Poulsbo as it is today. And last time we were talking, your wife mentioned that there were several families in the north Kitsap, Poulsbo area, and can you talk a little bit about that? About, I think she mentioned their returning or not returning.

EH: No, they never did come back. I think their name was Shintani, and they lived on a boathouse and harvested oysters.

MW: And I think she mentioned there was a family in Lemolo and another in Kingston?

EH: Yeah. And I don't know who they were.

MW: Uh-huh. But no one returned to that area.

EH: Nobody came back. Even Kingston, Lemolo or Poulsbo. But they have returned for class get-togethers or class reunions.

MW: But they chose not to come back to live.

EH: Yeah.

MW: Do you know the circumstances? Do you know why they might have made that choice?

EH: I don't know. See, Sada Omoto lives in, outside of Detroit, but he went and got his doctorate at, I think it was Wayne University, wasn't it?

MW: I'm not sure.

EH: I think that was it. And he has his family back there and stayed back there. The Kobas, they stayed in Seattle, the Okazakis, Kato, he became a pharmacist and married a gal whose family had a big store just off Madison Street in Seattle. So he's gone, and Tom Kitayama, you know about Tom.

MW: Well, tell us about Tom.

EH: I'll tell you, when him and I'd come up and visit, they'd come up every year and visit, they'd always come over, phone us up, say, well, I'll have lunch at such and such a time, we'd go out and sit on the patio and just talk about old times. And I have a root which is in storage, I've got to find that thing. But one of the Boy Scout troops that we took, we went to Mowich Lake, Mount Rainier, and we hiked up over Ipsut Pass down into the light, camped there for, well, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We were there for three days. It was Labor Day, and I remember Tom and his brother, they went fishing, and they caught a trout. And they cooked it up and made it and then got sick. [Laughs] I don't know whether it was the fish or what, but they got sick from eating that fish.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.