Densho Digital Archive - Chiyoko Yano Interview (denshovh-ychiyoko

<Begin Segment 21>

MA: And before 1962, what were you, were you working at the Treasury?

CY: No, I was working for the U.S. Treasury... let me see. Before I went to Japan I went, I was working for the U.S. Treasury. Then after I came back from Japan I didn't work for a while. But then I worked for, then we bought a house in Oakland, at 872 Arlington Avenue. And from there, I worked some of the -- not, it was just a part-time job, but I went to work for Laura Scudder's, the potato chip company. And they were very nice to me. They needed a bookkeeper, their bookkeeping system was so far behind that I had to, I went after hours to work on their bookkeeping. And then, so I did that for a little while. And then I, my friend, this Alice Hirao, she was in the printing business and she needed help, so I used to help her part-time. So there wasn't a full-time job either way. I couldn't, I had children and my mother used to come and babysit for me. And so anyway, so I couldn't work all the time, but then I came back... when I was working for Laura Scudder's, too, and Laura Scudder's moved to Santa Ana, near Disneyland. Because the people at Oakland area, they went on strike, the union workers. And the union workers wanted to come back to work, but the management closed the Oakland factory and moved everything to their Los Angeles headquarters. So I went to Los Angeles headquarters for, for about three weeks to set up the bookkeeping, customers from the Oakland area.

And then after that I left Laura Scudder's completely, and so I applied for unemployment insurance. And I only got two unemployment insurance checks because I thought, "Oh, good, I could rest a little bit." And then International House job came into the picture and I had to go apply. If I said no, I didn't want to go apply, I wouldn't get my unemployment check. And so in, but it took them about three weeks to let me know whether I was going to be hired or not, and about three -- then the employment officer, her name I remember so well was Betty Lou Harmon, she said, "Well, if International House doesn't want you, I have another job lined up, so come see me if they don't... if they don't give you another answer in one more week." Well, see, that was because I went once, and the person that wanted, that was leaving, the manager was on vacation, and so I had to wait for her to come back. And then when she came back they called me, and I interviewed, her. And then she couldn't make up her mind, so I had to wait until the director of International House saw me, and he was, it was vacation time, so they were all taking vacations. So he, I had to wait for Mr. Warrick, the executive director, to come back from his vacation, and that's why I had to wait about a week after each interview. So it was about three weeks altogether. And then after the third time, they said, "Can you come back, can you come to work next week on Tuesday?" So I said, "Okay." And so I called Ms. Betty Lou Harmon at the University of California employment office, told them that I got my job. So she says, "That's fine." And so I went to work for, and I was working there for eighteen years before I retired.