<Begin Segment 25>

SY: And then how did you meet your husband?

NG: He was in the neighborhood. I would have, we had our gas station, he would come in, so I knew him. And at that time there were a lot of gangs. Well, they're clubs; they're called clubs. They were clubs. And he was in one --

SY: This was in the '60s? '50s? '60s?

NG: Yeah, I guess '60s.

SY: '60s.

NG: Late '50s and early '60s, and they used to have problems. There would be fights and everything.

SY: Japanese American?

NG: Japanese Americans, yeah. Especially, like I remember going to -- this was my cousin, this is now later -- where groups of Japanese from different areas would be fighting. But anyhow, so the Valley had a club called, let's see, they, the Freelancers, I guess it was called, so they were up to no good. I mean, they were into cars. They liked, they used to have a drag strip there, up by the Hansen Dam, so all these guys were into cars, so they would get an old car and they'd fix it up and they would have these drag races. But they were up to no good. And they had, so their, it was a family -- I think the father was a gardener and the mother helped him -- I think she was a little strange, and they had these kids that today you would call special needs kids, so they, since they were, liked that family, all the guys hung out at their house and they would drink there. They had no, nobody hassled them because these parents were not parenting type parents. So none of them did well in school, and a couple of them died of drug overdose, but out of that bunch my husband's really good friend did, after the, after the service went to school and became a pharmacist. And my husband, after the service, same thing, met these two guys that had graduated college and they were doing the same, they were at Fort Bliss, Texas, and they were, he never did any, he always stayed in the States. And he was lucky; it was just after Korea and before Vietnam. So anyway, he made friends, made friends with these two guys who were both college graduates, and it kind of woke him up, you know? "Hey, we're doing the same thing. I guess I should go back to school." Unfortunately, right after high school he went to Valley and enrolled, took fifteen units, said this is not for me, so he enlisted in the service, volunteered, volunteered for the draft -- you know how it...

SY: Uh-huh.

NG: And then when he got out and decided he's gonna go back, went to Pierce, gonna start at Pierce 'cause he lived on the west side now, West Valley, and Pierce said, "I see that you have fifteen units of F's," because he didn't withdraw. [Laughs]

SY: Oh, no.

NG: So he had to get A's and B's to get it back to C level. [Laughs] But anyways, so yeah...

SY: So this was before you...

NG: So I knew him after he got out of service. The story goes that he had a girlfriend, but she sent him a "Dear John" letter.

SY: When he was in the service.

NG: Yeah, so we were, like, friends and then...

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.