Densho Digital Archive - Chiyoko Yano Interview (denshovh-ychiyoko

<Begin Segment 17>

MA: So the war ended and when did you actually leave Topaz?

CY: On August the 15th, the day that the war ended. We had decided several months before that we were going to earmark August 15th as the day that we leave. So it took us a few, we had to have at least a month to ask the tenants living in my house to leave, and they were all gone and out by August the 15th. And my next-door neighbor, Kelly, he came to pick us up at the train station and drove us home.

MA: So it was you and Joyce and your parents and your siblings, all returned back to...

CY: No, my brother Sumio was already serving in the army then. And so it was, and my brother Kazuo, the younger of my two brothers had come a week earlier to clean up the house. And so he, he was... I can't remember, he didn't come with Kelly because I don't think we all fit into his car if he came with our baggage and everything. We were so fortunate to have such a kind neighbor.

MA: So you returned directly, then, back to, to Berkeley.

CY: And then after we returned, my mother and my father had several friends who were... well, we would be, they were homeless, you know, they didn't have a place to go back to. So they, they could have gone to church, one of the churches, Japanese churches opened up their home, their rooms for sleeping quarters, etcetera, but some of them asked my parents so my parents allowed them to come and stay with us. So we had several people. My neighbor who used to live next to us in Topaz, he had lived in San Francisco before the war, but he was living at my house for quite some time. And then Mr. and Mrs. Ueda and her daughter lived at my mother's house for several years. And then I came back from Japan after four years, and my parents needed a space for three of us, four of us at that time, two girls and my husband and I. So we had to ask them to leave.

[Interruption]

MA: So you were telling me about returning to Berkeley and your house, and your mother and father housed many of the families who, you know, came back and didn't have anywhere to live. So how many Japanese Americans eventually returned to Berkeley that you noticed? Was there a significant part of the community that never returned?

CY: Not everyone returned. I noticed that not everybody returned, but I would say the majority returned to Berkeley or Oakland, the nearby neighborhood.

MA: And when did your husband come back from what he was doing in the OSS overseas and all of that?

CY: He came back to camp in March of (1945). He was released, finally released in March of (1945).

MA: Oh, okay. So, but when he was in the OSS already?

CY: He was in the OSS. I didn't see him coming back. (I came back) in March of (1945), came back to (Berkeley). Oh, and then he, he did, he did. I remember I went to pick him up at the train station. He came back in a captain's uniform because they had to dress him like an American soldier even if he was a civilian employee. And he, so he didn't have any civilian clothes, so he had a, he was a captain's rank.