<Begin Segment 19>

MA: So when, then, did your family leave Poston? How long were you there until?

KI: We were there 'til almost the very end. Because we had nowhere to go, you know, we didn't own any houses like some people did. And we didn't know anybody that would take us in, so says, "Well, we'll just wait and wait." But then we knew there was a hostel here that we could go to.

MA: A hostel in the Buddhist church?

KI: Buddhist church, yeah. And there was, it was, quite a bit of people were there, you know, but my mother-in-law says, "No," she says, "I can't go in a hostel," because her oldest son is like a schizo, and he wasn't violent or anything, but, you know, real weird, so she says no. So when she came back, she decided that she's gonna have to find a place anyway, and says, "Well, there's just no place to get." But we're lucky that the Musler family, which was an old German family that was very, we knew very well, said, well, he'll talk to the Salesian fathers, and because it was their old house. It was just a shell, the roof was still good, but no windows. And so, says, "Well, if you fix it up, you can live there," so that's what we did. We went in and fixed it up, put in the windows, got the water connected and stuff, and we lived there. Then everybody, my mother, my side of the family and my in-laws' family all lived in that one house until my, my side of the family was able to move out. It was, you know, it was pretty rough.

MA: And when did your husband come back from the war?

KI: Exactly on her birthday, so it was October 12, 1945. He had a lot of points, so he was one of the first to return from overseas because he was, that was, he was in there for five years, so he came back.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.