<Begin Segment 16>

MA: And what were your impressions of Minnesota when you first arrived?

HT: Well, I, they said that you might run into prejudice and a lot of people didn't want to, they couldn't get an apartment because they were Japanese and stuff like that. But we didn't run into that. And it was really strange because they said that, "Did you run into any prejudice?" I don't think I did. Because right away we were in the, like golf and all our friends, they were all Caucasians. They were really nice. And they were asking us how we came here and all that. And in fact one teacher, she was a teacher now, but she says she couldn't -- she was way up Roosevelt High School -- she says she couldn't figure out how so many, there were a lot of Japanese that came. And she couldn't figure out how, what happened. Then she learned, too. See, there was nothing in the books in those days, textbooks.

[Interruption]

MA: And so at the time, your family planned on settling in Minnesota permanently? There was no talk of moving back to California?

HT: No, no. Because there was nothing there. We would never have gone back to California. But later on they did. My brother moved out there because, oh, he married a Seattle girl, Osaka. Asaka-Osaka. [Laughs] Anyway, so, they moved out there. The whole family was here but he moved out there because he found another engineering job out there. And the some of the kids were born here but then they moved out there.

MA: But your parents were settled in Minneapolis.

HT: Here, yeah.

MA: What did they do? What type of work did they get involved in?

HT: My father got a job at Donaldson department store. It's not there anymore. And he was janitor. And his, my father-in-law and he both got a job. That's how I met my husband. And my husband didn't have a job so then he worked with my brother. He just got a job as a truck driver and stuff like that. So, it's just a small world. And then they worked night, and it helped my father.

MA: So your father worked for the department store.

HT: Yeah, janitor at night time.

MA: As a janitor. What did your mother do?

HT: My mother was always home.

MA: She was home.

HT: Yeah. She, she was staying home and cooked and stuff like that. And then I married and then I lived with their family. Everybody stuck together.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.