Densho Digital Archive - Jean Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mjean-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

KL: What did you do after high school?

JM: Oh, I took shorthand and typing in high school, took a civil service exam and went to work for the State of Oregon Welfare Office. And my dad said that we didn't have to pay him anything for living at home until we had a thousand dollars in our bank account. And we could have gone on to college, but I was having too much fun working and saving my money, and not studying. So from then I went on to, I went and worked at the medical school, decided I liked being a medical secretary. And I also lived in Hawaii for a year, and was a medical secretary there, came back and got another job as a medical secretary and worked for twenty-eight years in the Heart Research Lab at OHSU. And my boss is going to be ninety in August, and I'm having a reunion at the Heart Research Lab. My invitation list is about seventy email addresses, and because of where I live, have this facility for throwing big parties, I'm taking advantage of it, it's going to be in the penthouse of Holladay Park Plaza where I live, which is a life of luxury. [Laughs] Who would have thought that... but as I said, once you've lived in the camp, everything is a luxury, and just that experience of having lived in the camp, everything else is just, certainly life is just really great.

KL: When did you and your dad take that trip back to Japan?

JM: I can't remember. The only thing I remember, I took back with me, John Kennedy (half) dollars, was it dollar coins? As a "omiyage," because it could be easily passed out to the children. I remember doing that. So I can't remember if that was after he was assassinated, but all I know is he was pretty close to ninety, and there was a question of him being able to travel, but he was really in good health. And the only thing is he had to have his smallpox vaccination, and for some reason, he scratched his arm and scratched his eye, and for a minute I thought were weren't going to be able to go, because... but it didn't get in his eye, so it just got swollen above his eye. Thought he was going to have to take him, but they said we could take the patch off before we went. I think he was pretty close to ninety.

KL: Did your sister go as well?

JM: Pardon?

KL: Did your sister go with you as well?

JM: No, just I was able to take him. And we had a very, I mean, I think the airfare round trip was around six hundred dollars round trip. But the hotels were pretty expensive once we got to Japan. But I don't know whether I told you that he made breakfast for my mother the morning he died at ninety-nine and a half.

KL: No, you didn't.

JM: [Laughs] So he lived another good ten years, I think, after our trip to Japan.

KL: How long did he manage the hotel?

JM: From... let's see. We came back, and I think we were in the hotel business for nine years, and so I'm trying to figure out, but I think he was close to sixty when we went to camp. So if he managed the hotel for another ten years, he was pretty, he was about seventy-five when he retired. And I can remember him being up on a plank with, between two ladders. And walking up there with the wallpaper and wallpapering the ceiling, and they were high ceilings in all the hotels back then. And I could hardly stand to watch him. And I remember when he was in his nineties, he wouldn't let us call Roto-Rooter, he had to clean the gutters themselves, so it's raining, and I'm holding on to the ladder with my eyes closed and an umbrella over my head, and holding onto the ladder, and he's up there cleaning the gutters, and his knees are shaking. And also he used to paint the altar at our temple, and he painted it with a special gold that he had to make a mixture of gold dust. And everybody, the ministers always commented on, "The gold in your altar is different than any other thing that comes from, store-bought from Japan." And it's because that altar was built when the World's Fair was held in Portland back in 1910 or something like that. The carvers came from Japan for the World's Fair, and proceeded to carve our altar for us. So we have a very special Buddhist altar with Mount Hood, or Mt. Fujiyama at the base of it.