<Begin Segment 14>

JK: Did your family ever consider selling off the store during the resettlement and going into a different line of work?

PD: No. At one time, my uncle did go to San Jose State, but I don't think he completed his work there. But at the time, the Dobashi family had four brothers. There was Dick Dobashi and Henry Dobashi, and I forgot my father. Dick, James, Henry, and Harry, and they were the four brothers that ran the store at the time. And after that, I came along and I started working at the store, because my father was getting ill due to diabetes, and so I started working in the store.

JK: So it seemed at the time that a lot of the Japanese Americans, they were store owners and farmers. You mentioned that your uncle, Judge Kanemoto, who held your, or who married you. Do you know how he got into, into law?

PD: He attended the University of Santa Clara as a lawyer, and he had his first office over there, and I guess they call it the Issei Memorial Building over here? I'm not sure, where the JACL had their building before, and his law office was there. And then after some time in his practice, he was appointed a judgeship, so he became one of the first Japanese judge -- he became the first Japanese judge, I think, in the United States.

JK: And that was a judge here in San Jose.

PD: Yeah.

JK: Working in the Issei Memorial Building.

PD: In municipal court.

JK: And overall, what was the morale of your family leaving the camps?

PD: I was just going home. I don't know what... I guess I was really too young to know of anything of the morale of the family. I guess it's just glad to get it over with.

JK: Was there a high level of cooperation among the Japanese American community?

PD: I think so. I don't... I never remember any bad stories of the times, those times there.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.