Densho Digital Archive
Topaz Museum Collection
Title: Grace F. Oshita Interview
Narrator: Grace F. Oshita
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Date: June 4, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-ograce-01-0020

<Begin Segment 20>

MA: Okay, so I wanted to ask you about your husband and how you met him.

GO: My, my husband's mother, and my mom Rae's mother are cousins, first cousins. And so we used to take a short jaunt up to Sacramento, they lived in Woodland, a town next to Sacramento, and visit with them. Let's see. First, I think it started out with his father working at the local hospital, which is quite well-known to other doctors all over. They used to have, apparently, very good doctors there, the whole hospital was known to be a good one. And so when the two brothers graduated high school, they gave them a job also. And I think if they had the funds... well, there again, I better not say, 'cause it'll be written. [Laughs]

MA: And what's your husband's name?

GO: Ben Chimato, C-H-I-M-A-T-O. He says, "Not Tomato, Chimato." [Laughs]

MA: So you knew him then, it sounds like, from when you were, when you were young.

GO: Yes, uh-huh. So, you know, the ten-year-old, I used to look up to him and think, "Wow." [Laughs]

MA: And when did you reconnect with him? Was that in Salt Lake City?

GO: Yes, uh-huh, the family didn't have anybody to, you know, closer than my mother's family, and like I said, Mother's, were cousins, so...

MA: And tell me about your, your kids, their names and...

GO: Oh, Allen Ken Oshita is a doctor. Let's see, diagnostic radiologist (...), so that's his title, anyway. And he works out of San Francisco Pacific Medical Center, I think. So he's doing fine. He married a girl from Hawaii, and they have two adopted children. Let's see, the daughter, Jennifer is maybe twenty-two and lives in L.A., she's trying to get a teaching certificate, she was telling me the other night when she called me. She's sweet, I like her. (And Jonathan is his son. I also have a daughter, Lynne Fumiye Doi, who lives here in Salt Lake City. She and her husband have two daughters, Shelley and Jamie).

[Interruption]

MA: And so you had one son?

GO: Yes, uh-huh. And he's... he's, what did I say? My son's a doctor in the San Francisco hospital, and he's been there ever since he finished everything, you know how they have to do residency and the internship and this and that and the other. Well, they kept him at Stanford to do everything, he didn't have to move around. So he was very fortunate. So he lives in San Mateo, he says only forty-five minutes from door to door, job and the other hospital and his home. So it is a hospital in San Francisco. I asked him if he was busy and he said, "Yes," and being a radiologist, when he told me that he had eye problem, I thought, "My goodness, he'll lose his career," I mean, job. And he came through that, and he's taking it a little slower than before. But it's the old building that was torn down to make this new one. I was born at this Lane Hospital, but it isn't Lane anymore.

MA: That's kind of neat that your son is working in that same area.

GO: Yeah, he's working there yet. So he hasn't had to move to change jobs, or even to, as much as students have to go to different... to establish their name or something, but he didn't have to do that.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.