<Begin Segment 21>

RP: Now you stayed in Chicago for another ten years.

KY: Yeah, I stayed. Yeah.

RP: What did you do in that time that you were in Chicago?

KY: Well, from the very beginning when I hit Chicago, I worked in this trailer, home trailers. You know, they make trailers that moves. You know, house trailers. I started working there making cabinets for the inside of trailers. And I was doing that. And I did that as long as we were working in this trailer, trailer company. I don't know how many years I worked there, but a long time. When my sister, I mean her, and my brother-in-law moved to Long Beach my folks, we had already rented an apartment for them. And after they moved in there they decided to move to another place and so that the whole family could be together. And that's what happened. We found, we found a cheap apartment on Forty-Seventh Street in Chicago. And the place that we moved to was a, it was, on the first floor there was a store that sold Japanese goods and another, other Japanese foods. And we got to know them very well. And we moved in the back, and the apartment was a crummy place but it was some place to live and we lived there until I got married. And they in turn moved to another place which was much nicer. But after I got married, my wife was a visiting nurse. Do you know what a visiting nurse is? They, she was a nurse, RN, but she'd go to the home of the patient and treat them at home. That's why they call them visiting nurses, nurse. And the place that she was working was in Oak Park. It's a suburb of Chicago. The first, first suburb of Chicago, west of Chicago. And she found an apartment and when we got married we moved into that apartment.

RP: Had she, had she been in camp too?

KY: Very short time. Very short time.

RP: Where was she from?

KY: Well, she was from, she was... first she was at Santa Anita. That wasn't a camp but just a temporary quarters. And then she moved to what was the name of the place... another camp way on, on the east side of... it's the east side of New York. It wasn't New York, but it was near New York and... Rohwer, Rohwer is the name of the.

RP: Oh, Rohwer?

KY: Yeah, Rohwer.

RP: Oh.

KY: That's on the East Coast almost.

RP: Arkansas.

KY: That's where she was in camp but she didn't stay long because she wanted to finish her apprenticeship as a nurse. And so she moved to Chicago and went to school there. And then, and her sister, her older sister, was already in Chicago working for Esquire Magazine. And so it ended up that she was living with her sister when I met her anyway. I met her in Chicago. This guy that I worked with, his wife was real close to my wife. They knew each other before they went to camp. And so one day her husband, the guy that I worked with, says, "Why don't you come over to our house? I want you to meet this girl," that's vacationing with them. So I sad okay and I went over there and the first time I saw her I told myself, "I'm gonna marry that girl." And so right away I went out and got a ring. This guy, he didn't have a shop or anything. He was making rings at home and selling it to anybody. Well, I learned about him and I bought, I bought this ring right away. That's how fast our romance was. But I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and so, and then once she was living in New York but after she, after the vacation with my friend, she went back to New York and told me, "Why don't you come during the Christmas holidays and come and see me in New York. " So I says, "Okay, I'll come." So I did. I went to New York and I presented her this ring. We got engaged right there. That's how fast our romance was.

RP: That's great.

KY: Yeah.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.