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TI: Well, let's move to your mother. And let's look because she did some interesting things when she was growing up also. So what was your mother like?

JG: Well, my mother was... it's interesting because I got a different take on her in some ways. She was always encouraging, always, but she was also very determined and she had very definite ideas, too. But she did it in a nice way, at least I thought so. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so not everyone thought so? [Laughs]

JG: Well, okay, I will give you some examples. My mother while she was growing up was very social. I saw a lot of pictures with her and her friends. She was very involved with the church community and went to conferences, you know how all those church conferences were going on and she did a lot of that. I can remember Mother saying that she was superintendent of the school, the Sunday school at West Tenth Episcopal Church in Oakland. And so anyway, this was pre-World War II and she had made the comment that they would not send relief and help to Japan. We were Americans so I don't know, I guess this was her feeling, you know. And so it was interesting, she would make statements like when we got married we were married by three ministers, different ministers at the church so they were well thought of and wanted to include everybody. Frank Aaron Smith and another minister, and she said, "We had a very simple ceremony," because we were talking about our wedding and she said, "And we cleaned up the church after our wedding." [Laughs] So she was basically telling me that I was going to have a simple wedding too because that's what the family did. When she was growing up she was a good student and I think I told you but I will share it again that when she was in high school she wanted to go to college but there was really no money to do that. So her teacher, Miss Brawthen, who was the secretarial teacher, shorthand and all that, she thought so much of my mother that she spent the summer dictating to her so she could be prepared for the test for civil service. So my mother became the first Asian woman or minority to pass that civil service exam. It was in 1929. So I was... she was very proud of that you know. Miss Brawthen was a lifelong friend because when she had her, ten years later when my mother was going to get married, or nine years later, she had a wedding shower for her. So, I mean, my mother was always regarded well. And a few years after her hiring at the Board of Education she became secretary to the superintendent of adult education and held that position for thirty-seven years. She worked at Merritt Business School before that.

TI: But back in 1929, what kind of work did she do after she passed the civil service exam?

JG: She worked at Merritt Business School as a secretary and then she went over to the board.

TI: Okay, and so when the war broke out, what position was she in?

JG: Oh, she was the secretary to the superintendent of adult education and that I think is really interesting too because when Mom ended up in the camp, she taught ESL or English as a Second Language to the Issei and all the materials came from the Oakland Board of Education. And another interesting aside is the fact that all the ladies, all the secretaries, all her friends, they would write to her but one time, and she kept this, they sent this big long letter that must have been three or four feet long because each wrote something and they pasted it together, made it like a folded paper letter and it was huge and she kept it. I still have that letter. It was very gossipy, so and so got married, so and so has a new boyfriend, so and so has a new baby, things like that. They were very supportive of my mom and kept her in their heart. And I have two books or three books, some of my favorites like Make Way for the Ducklings and Babar and a couple of other books that I love to this day that were from Mom's friends. One of them was the superintendent of elementary education, Gretchen Wulfing, who held that position for years, from Fanny Bulger, different people. I mean I have these books still from that time.

TI: That they sent to your mother for you?

JG: For me in Topaz.

SF: You mentioned that your family wasn't very supportive of Japan before the war.

JG: That's right.

SF: So you never got involved in like making those, what do you call those, gift packages or for the soldiers? So were there other things like that sort of... your mom sort of showed her political views in a sense?

JG: Yeah, she did. But later what I found out was strange because I found the voting records. My mother was a Republican, registered Republican and my uncle was a registered Democrat. And they voted regularly and I remember growing up having pictures of Ronald Reagan, you know, they gave money. And here we are staunch Democrats or Independents. [Laughs]

[Interruption]

TI: But the question I haven't asked is your mother and father, how did they meet?

JG: Oh, that's interesting, they met through church. They met at West Tenth and I think my father... I remember giving this speech at their fiftieth anniversary and they met at church and my father pursued my mother and of course I think my mother thought he was very nice. And my father would be at the house all the time, visiting at the house, and my grandmother would walk through the house winding the clocks... hint, hint, time to get out of here. [Laughs]

TI: Now did your mother have a lot of suitors back then?

JG: I have no idea but I think some people... my mother was a very with it lady, she was very fashionable, she was very smart, you know.

SF: Were most of her girlfriends Nihonjins?

JG: She had hakujin girlfriends and Nihonjin girlfriends exactly because she was kind of different because she went out of the box. And I think after World War II when we came back because of the Duvenecks, and because of the suggestion by the government that, "We want you to disperse," that we moved to east Oakland. Oh, no that's not true because we moved to east Oakland before the war started. So she was... she and dad were different.

TI: I think a lot of it I mean just she worked ten years in this... she passed this civil service exam, I mean it's very different occupation than many people had back then, many Niseis. So that's probably why also just being exposed to different things.

JG: Yeah, because they bought their house in the early '40s and had that house and it was landscaped and everything, the brand new house before the war started. So I mean, I have pictures of my dad watering the lawn and the little plants and stuff. I mean it was really nice.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.