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TI: And so we're, Rose, we're coming towards the end of the interview, but there's one topic I wanted to just touch upon and that was your friendship with Dorothy Kobara and your work with the, I guess, senior citizens' group. Can you, can you tell me a little bit about, about that?

RT: Yes, she started a senior group from her Saratoga home. She saw there was a need for these isolated, especially Issei women, they didn't drive and they didn't know much English and so in those days they were very isolated, coming out of internment camp, and so she wanted to start a group. My parents were one of the first group that was invited to her home and they told me about her and she didn't speak any, well, hardly much Japanese, and so we sort of teamed up and she did all the outside, going to the Council of Aging, going to different places to get some funding, and I was the communicator with the Isseis, and it worked out fine. She, I'm more or less a social introvert, so she was a very soft spoken person, but I don't know, people just, they see her and they, when she talks to them she was so soft spoken, but everybody wanted to do something for her. She'd go to the supermarket and she, we didn't have much of anything and she'd want something and they says, the managers would just kind of do anything that she wanted them to do, and she'd go to the Council of Aging and she was able to get funding for an escort driver that would take the Isseis to their medical appointments, and she had told them it was the Japanese culture to go visit the graves in the cemetery, so that was, because of the Japanese culture she was able to get the escort driver to take the Isseis to the cemetery once a month and grocery shopping in Japantown. She was just, and she's the one that started the daruma festival in, what is it, west San Jose? Yeah, she, that was very successful for several years, but...

TI: Yeah, so Dorothy is a Nisei?

RT: Yeah, she's a Nisei.

TI: And, and so she sounds like a remarkable, remarkable...

RT: She's a remarkable person.

TI: I'm curious, how, in general, how did the Niseis treat you as a, sort of a Kibei? You were...

RT: Yeah, I didn't know that there was a lot of problem with the Kibeis in the camps. I didn't know any of that history, but I do know that they were rather cool to me. And, but then I was too busy, on the weekends I was busy picking up the Isseis to take them to some gathering or, and during the weekday I was busy working. My children were little, so I couldn't, we couldn't afford a babysitter because my, we were sending money to Japan to support his parents, so I always worked nighttime, and so I was too busy. And then the, in the '70s the Japanese businessmen started coming here, but they didn't, in those days there weren't that many, so I had to, I did a lot of work helping them get settled in.

TI: So it's your, your language ability really was, I guess, well, a great way of connecting with the Isseis, but then later on with the Japanese businessmen. Did you ever have any conversations with Dorothy about the Niseis and the Kibeis and, and the relationships between the two groups?

RT: No. No. I did read a lot of books about what happened in camp and the Kibeis and "no-nos" and all, all this, and so I kind of gathered why the Niseis shunned the Kibeis.

TI: And why do you think that? I mean, when you look at your, what you read and what you've heard, why do you think the Niseis shunned the Kibei?

RT: Well, because, I guess, some of 'em were very active in supporting the Japanese war effort. Some of 'em didn't think that the Japanese could lose. I don't know.

TI: No, that's good. I'm just curious how, 'cause I've read the same thing, so I'm just curious from your perspective what, what that looked like. Steve, any closing questions or anything else?

SF: Maybe, what advice might she give to the younger generation of Japanese Americans? From your broad experience, would you give any advice to, like my daughter who's a Yonsei,or a Gosei, her children?

RT: Well, life is so different. I look at my grandchildren and what they have and their life, and it is so different. I don't know.

TI: Savor those candy bars. [Laughs]

RT: No, when they say they want an Xbox 360 for... [I don't even know what that is, but I was very, we were very lucky that my daughter started working for Apple when they were developing Kanji Talk. And so my husband and I was, we were kind of a user study group and that's how I learned computers and to use Japanese, and so I'm really glad that all these things happened and I was at the right place at the right time and now I'm able to do the Yu-Ai Kai's English, I translate that into Japanese and I do their Japanese newsletters and I do a lot of translation, so it works out. People have helped us a lot along the way and now, as I, I'm eighty years old now, but I'm still able to help people with their medical, when they go to the medical doctors and other things. Japanese families that are here, sometimes they need some help.

TI: So Rose, thank you so much. This was an excellent interview. I really enjoyed just the time. Thank you.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.