Densho Digital Archive - Lucy Kirihara Interview (denshovh-klucy-01-0016)

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SO: So you spent a year there and then you came back and taught...

LK: And taught in St. Paul.

SO: And what school was that?

LK: I went to Marshall Junior. High. It was right in the inner city, and it was a junior high and I taught there for eight years or so, seven or eight years. But in the meantime I did get married, Miki and I got married. And since I was teaching, we were going to live, and he was going to go back to school, 'cause he hadn't finished school, so he wanted to become an architect. And so we knew it was going to be a long haul. And we thought, oh, they have these inexpensive track homes in Bloomington. So we said maybe we should buy one of those, 'cause he had the GI Bill. So we went to the Orin Thompson Homes and every time we went to a model home, they ignored us and wouldn't sell to us. Finally they came out and said, "We are not gonna sell to you." So we had the JACL, they were going to try to do something that we could purchase a home, but in the meantime, my sister had a friend who lived in this project, they're all track homes, and she said, "Oh, someone is selling their home in Bloomington," and they have to move, it was only six months old...

SO: What year was that?

LK: It would be 1955. She said, "I bet you could buy that house." And then Orin Thompson has nothing to say about it, if an owner sells it. And he was very nice. I'll never forget Mr. Taylor, he said he'd be happy to sell to us, however, he went to the neighbor in front of us, we live on the corner, and asked them if it were all right, they said fine. The neighbor right next to us, he said fine, and the neighbor in back of us. And they're still the same neighbors almost. And so we thought it would be a good investment, that we were gonna live there five years or so and then we would move. And he finished school, but then after six, seven years, then we had children. Then our children got involved with friends and so forth and we're still there. It's fifty-four years and we're still living there. [Laughs] But we did have to put on an addition because we had three children and so forth, and so it's perfect now, because it's only one story and we don't have to climb stairs at our retiring age, it's just perfect. I have my porch, I have my addition and I have a third garage so it's perfect. I still like my old neighbors. So we're there.

SO: What was the Japanese community like in the '50s?

LK: When we first moved?

SO: Yes.

LK: Well, we had the JACL. Oh, we had a community center in Minneapolis. We had this nice, on Blaisdell, really a nice building, and we had an Episcopal minister who sort of headed it. But it was still, he had his church there, but still it was a community center, and then we would have activities there. I remember going there quite often. And then they would have... I think Miki belonged to a baseball team, he belonged to a basketball team. And they had dances and so forth. And when we first came out, when my sister was first here, they had all those soldiers from Fort Snelling, so I remember we had a lot of soldiers over for dinner in that apartment over the barber shop. They were all there. It's not that we had that kind of money, but somehow they stayed for dinner and I remember us always whipping up chow mein, because that you could stretch far. Cook the noodles and a little bit of meat and a lot of vegetables and it was really good chow mein, but that's what we would cook all the time. '45, '46, '47, they were still here, and they appreciated it, I remember. And so the Japanese community, they still... but like we were in St. Paul, and it was bigger in Minneapolis. We had fewer Japanese in St. Paul.