<Begin Segment 25>

SY: And do you remember how you decided to come back to L.A.?

YY: Well, we had, I had bought a car, a 1940 Ford, and then we decided, well, we could go back on the car. So we fixed it up so that the baby could sleep in the back. It was a two door sedan, I think that's what it was. It was like a two door sedan. But it brought us back to L.A.

SY: That must've taken you a while.

YY: Well, it did because we stopped at different places, and we stopped with our friends in Chicago, so I think it took us about two weeks to get home, I mean go back.

SY: And you never had any bad experiences with people saying, because you were Japanese American --

YY: Japanese, no.

SY: Never?

YY: No. I don't remember any bad... 'cause we had to stop on the way back several times, but I don't remember being told that we can't stay there.

SY: So you didn't have any trouble finding places to stay.

YY: Yeah, I guess we were fortunate.

SY: So when you decided to come back to L.A., were you intending, did you have a job in mind, or you were just gonna move and then see what...

YY: No. We used to, we came back and we stayed with her parents 'cause they were there already in Montebello. Then in January of '48 I got a job with... no, was it '48? Yeah, I got a job with L.A. City Health Department. And then in 1949 I took the, they have this registered sanitarian's certificate that you have to have to be a health inspector in L.A., in the city of, or in the state of California. So I passed that in 1949, then I passed the national one, the National Sanitarians Association, and I got their certificate, registration, so then I was able to be promoted at the L.A. City Health Department. And I worked there for about, let's see, 1952, I left and went to work for the city of, County of Los Angeles Health Department.

SY: And so when you originally started, it wasn't, a college degree was not important or anything like that?

YY: Right

SY: So you just, and what exactly did you do when you first started?

YY: I was doing mostly rodent control.

SY: Going to different places in L.A.?

YY: Mostly in the L.A. city hall. [Laughs]

SY: Lots of rats there, huh?

YY: Yeah.

SY: And what, you just inspected, you didn't have to do any kind of rodent control.

YY: No, yeah, 'cause we were worried about disease from the... so I would, I would catch the rodents in City Hall, then I'd take it up to our lab and we would comb it for fleas and stuff like that, find out if they're carrying any kind of disease. And we'd cut it up and look at it.

SY: You actually did this yourself? [YY nods] And how were you trained to do this?

YY: When you first join the health department we have to go to school for over six weeks, I think. We'd learn about the laws of, the health laws and things like that, and all these different things that, we learned about the rats and things, and mosquitoes and things. Then we have to go, we have to go to night school. I went to City College and took courses that was needed to take the examination for registration.

SY: So there's a lot of education involved. And so did the medical, your being in a hospital, that helped you?

YY: Yeah, it helped a little bit, but it was altogether different things that we had to study for.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.