<Begin Segment 15>

MA: So then, okay, so you were in Indianapolis for about a month and then that's when your parents came out.

HT: Yeah, with my sister.

MA: With your sister.

HT: Uh-huh. And they came to Minneapolis at the hostel. It was on Clifton Road someplace. And then that's where I met them and then we rented a place out close to where my sister graduated, Washburn High School. That was a ritzy area at that time. I had to laugh because we had to get a formal for graduation. [Laughs].

MA: And, so, your brother is what brought you to Minneapolis? Is that right? He was working as an engineer?

HT: Yes. First he was in the army at Fort Snelling. And then the war ended -- he was learning Japanese, and, in fact, one of the books we have that he learned. He went to Japanese school but they didn't know too much. They had to learn all that. And they, he almost going to go to Japan area, but then the war ended. So then he found this job (at the Vern G. Ellen Co.) and this family was a life saver. He was so good to him. He treated him like their own son. And then they, he even built a house close by. And one thing that happened was everybody was nice to him and everything, but they had a petition going. They didn't want him to build a house close by. And it came to one of the person that works the same place as my brother. He tore it up and that was it. There was no prejudice after that. He just tore up that petition.

MA: So the people who were behind the petition were people from the neighborhood?

HT: Whoever it was they didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't know, either, they were passing it around. They didn't want him in the neighborhood. You know, it's maybe they had a brother or somebody that died or whatever. It's just war hysteria. So, but then that was the only prejudice that he ran into. But the other one was when we were at the hostel, my father went to, to a place where he could buy wine. And he went in there and they said, "You Indian. Get out." They thought he was an Indian. And that, that's still was law in those days when we first came in 1946.

MA: What was law?

HT: That you can't sell any liquor to Indians. That was the law a long time ago. They don't do that anymore. He said, "They didn't sell it to me because they thought I was Indian." He said, he was shocked.

MA: That's interesting, then, the prejudice came because people thought you were --

HT: Indian.

MA: Yeah.

HT: Well, that was just the law for the wine -- the bar or whatever, where they sell the wine. And I think that was, they were just thought he was an Indian so it wasn't a prejudice or anything. I think that was just the law. And that was it. And after a while that was fine.

MA: And the hostel was for people who were resettling?

HT: Yeah.

MA: So Japanese American families who were coming to...

HT: Uh-huh. There was the person that was in charge was Mrs. Akard. And I can't remember, she was really nice. She had all of us and then we had meals there and everything. And we just slept upstairs. We had a place to stay until we find someplace that we could move out to.

MA: And the families in the hostels, were they from all over?

HT: Yeah.

MA: So all the camps, all over?

HT: Yeah, I really don't know. Some of them, yeah, I think because I've never known them. They just happened to come in and they just couldn't find anything right away so then they, until they got resettled we stayed there. She was very nice, yeah. I could just sort of, we couldn't stay too long. Then we went and rented a little house in South Minneapolis.

MA: And what were --

HT: And soon thereafter, my brother bought a house for us.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.