<Begin Segment 6>

KL: What do you remember about the house that you lived in in Los Angeles?

JO: It was a nice little house. I think the house, I remember the address, it was 2958 East Second Street, and it's up the hill. And at the bottom of the hill was Evergreen Baptist Church, and I used to go to pre-K, nursery school there. And I used to also go to Sunday service.

KL: Did your dad maintain anything of Buddhist traditional practice?

JO: No. In fact, the whole family was Christian, Methodist. The grandparents were Methodist.

KL: But you went to Baptist services?

JO: Well, that was only at that time. In camp I went to Christian church, reluctantly, but I went. And let's see... so the house was, I shared a bedroom with my sister, and my parents had a bedroom, I think. So it must have been a two-bedroom house. But the interesting thing about this house that I remember was it had a room in the back that was sort of like a porch, covered area, but it was our toy room. We had all kinds of toys back there, and it was fun to play there. And that's what I remember, and then a small backyard. But it was a rental, so it was not our own house.

KL: Is that the only house that you lived in before going to Manzanar?

JO: It's the only house I remember. I may have lived elsewhere, but I don't remember. When I was first born they were living in a smaller unit. And when my sister came, maybe that's when we moved there, I don't really know. But that's all I remember.

KL: It was up a hill, you said? What else do you remember about the neighborhood?

JO: It was just a lot of little houses. And it wasn't all Japanese, it was mixed, I think.

KL: Who else, what other groups lived there, people from other groups?

JO: Our next door neighbor though was Japanese, I remember that. And they helped to store some of our things in their garage, in their basement. We didn't have a basement in our house, but our house was a rental. They owned their own house, so we stored some things in the basement of their house, and that's where I stored my toys. And when we came back after the war, and this is of course in 1952 or later, went back to the house to see our things, and they were all ruined from the...

KL: Yeah, ten years later.

JO: Yeah, moisture and everything.

KL: Do you know your neighbors' names?

JO: Yes, they were the Ikedas, but I don't know the parents' names. And I think it was Ikeda. And then later on, I met a friend whose husband's brother married one of the daughters. So her name was Mutsuko Ikeda, and now it's Mutsuko Okada.

KL: How funny. Who were your other neighbors?

JO: I don't remember any of the other neighbors. I don't think we were friendly with them. They may not have been Japanese. You know, it's funny, but in those days, it seems like that's the only friends that they associated with, were Japanese. Like my mother and her friends were all friends from her college days, and they were all Japanese.

KL: But your parents' primary... did they use English as their primary language?

JO: Yes. They didn't speak Japanese at home. So that's why, consequently, I can't speak it at all. Yeah, and my father, even my father's friends were from his college days. And a lot of them were my mother's friends from her college days. And that was... see, now I don't know too much about the social activity, because right during that time they were all, my father was busy working seven days a week, like probably eighteen hours a day. He was helping my grandfather in the store, and my grandfather made him work all the time, so they didn't have much of a social life.

KL: Was Evergreen Baptist predominately Japanese American?

JO: Yes, it was predominately Japanese.

KL: Did you guys celebrate, did you have favorite holidays or do anything in particular for birthdays that you remember?

JO: For my birthday, it was July, I never had a party. Never had a... I don't remember one single birthday party, because it was always July, school was out, and we never had a party. Christmas, we celebrated Christmas with Christmas decorations and presents. But we were not very wealthy, so we were... anyway, I think we were not that wealthy because my father worked for father-in-law, and he didn't get paid that much, I don't think.

KL: Oh, that's right, he worked in your grandparents' store.

JO: Yeah. Don't think he got paid very much, so whatever the going rate was for slave labor. [Laughs] I say that.

KL: Did he like it?

JO: My grandfather?

KL: Your father.

JO: My father. Well, he... because he couldn't get a job because of prejudice and even though he was an architect, he couldn't get a license because you had to work as an intern for an architect for so many years before you could qualify for a license. He was never able to do that because nobody would hire him. So anyway, he just, when he first graduated college, he worked as a florist delivery man, because he worked for San Lorenzo Nursery, that was all Japanese.

KL: Do you think he was disappointed by the way things turned out, or do you think he just went on?

JO: Well, I have to tell you this story. He got the job working with my grandfather until after... went to camp, when he went to camp he went to New York. He went to New York to look for work, and I guess he had in his mind all along that he wanted to leave camp, but he had no money, so he went to work to pick potatoes and thought, I think he thought he would get more money that way, but I think they paid him the same wage, he couldn't get paid that much more. So he went to New York to look for work, and he got a job, he got hired as a draftsman with American Brake Shoe, so this was a national company. And they used to make brake shoe switches, brake switches for railroads. Railroads were big in those days. And so he got the job, but the job was in Chicago, so they moved him to Chicago, they gave him fare to go to Chicago, because he didn't have any money. Twenty-five dollars plus a one-way ticket doesn't take you very much anywhere after having to feed yourself for so long. Now, he did have a friend in New York, and he stayed, I think he stayed at the Y there also. So then he went to Chicago, and went to work as a draftsman, and he did this until he got transferred to Los Angeles, and he went to work in Los Angeles. And when he went to work in Los Angeles, he met up with a friend who also went to architect school, and this friend was working for the Department of Water and Power, and said, "I can get you a job with the Department of Water and Power in architecture work, but you have to take an exam and qualify." So he did, and he qualified, and they offered him the job. And according to what I heard, my mother didn't want him to take the job because it would mean that he would have to take a step back in pay. But he really wanted to do it, because it was in his line of work. But he didn't do that. Come (1999), he's laying in his death bed, and I know he's not going to last too much longer. He says, "You know, my deepest regret is that I didn't go do that work." That made me cry. It was very sad to think that all this time, he could have done that work, and he could have gone on, you know, and made a lot more money, but he was stuck in this draftsman job at this railroad company. It was very sad. And especially to tell me that on his death bed.

KL: You were close to your parents.

JO: Yes, well, I was especially fond of my father; he was so kind to me.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.