Densho Digital Archive - Mas Okabe Interview (denshovh-omas

<Begin Segment 23>

KL: So this is tape three of an interview with Mas Okabe on January 30th, and we left off talking about you had gone to USC for dental school Was it what you thought, did you like dental school?

MO: Yes, I enjoyed it. My freshman year, we got to work on cadavers, and that was really interesting. Freshman year, I met my wife.

KL: How did you meet?

MO: Well, there was this organization called the Nisei Trojans Club, and I forget what... what was it, Psi Omega? No.

Off camera: Sigma Phi?

MO: Sigma Phi. And they had a yearly get together, and the ladies would bring, make lunch and bring it to this picnic like thing, and guys would go. And you would bid on the lunch. And whichever lunch you got, the person who made it comes with it. So I bid, and I won her. [Laughs]

KL: Was it immediate that you wanted to get to know her more at least?

MO: Yeah, I felt like, you know, I said, "Oh, she's cute," this and that. It wasn't instant big time love, but it was starting to grow from there. I didn't tell her all this. [Laughs]

KL: What was she studying?

MO: I don't know what she's saying.

KL: What was she studying?

MO: Oh, she was studying... she was working on a bachelor of science, and I couldn't see any connection between bachelor of science and what she was doing, because all she had was art classes, seemed like. And she was studying to be a teacher, education. So I didn't see the connection, but, you know, bachelor is a bachelor, I guess. So that's how we met.

KL: And that was your first year of dental school?

MO: Yeah, freshman. I think she was there half a semester before me, right? Yeah.

KL: [Coughs] Excuse me. How long were you in dental school?

MO: Four years, four years. That's kind of a fun time again, meet new friends. This time I was in Los Angeles, which I had never been before.

KL: Yeah, what was your --

MO: It's big, you know. You need a car. So before I went to USC, I purchased this used car, it was a 1953 Plymouth. You know, at that time I didn't know anything about cars.

KL: What year was it --

MO: '53.

KL: -- when you started school at USC?

MO: USC it was '55.

KL: You didn't know anything about cars, you said.

MO: No, I don't know anything about cars.

KL: Why'd you choose that car?

MO: It was cheap, you know. Bought it at a used car lot. And I bought it with the money that I saved, which I earned during the summertime working out on the ranch, picking tomatoes, picking fruits and this and that. And I saved all that money. And then with that money, I bought this car. Drove down to L.A., and I had that with me. And then one time I went, after I met her and we started dating, I went to her place. I parked the car in a parking lot, they had a church, so I parked the car in the church lot, I stayed there to visit, and then I was leaving, started backing out, and I, she was there on the porch, and I guess she was waving, don't... you know, stop. And I kept going, and I banged into this truck or something, put a huge dent in my trunk. Had to get a new trunk. Went to the used car lot, you know, the junk lot, and shopped around for a part, got it, the other guy put it on. It was okay.

KL: Where did you live when you were at USC?

MO: I lived in this place where they had students who could get room and board, and I paid so much a month.

KL: Was it like a private boarding house?

MO: Yes. It wasn't affiliated with the school. Most of the students there were Japanese American students, and it was fairly close, you could walk.

KL: Were they people who had been to Japan, or they stayed in the U.S.?

MO: No, these are mostly people that were here after the war. They didn't go back.

KL: How was your relationship with them?

MO: Normal. They didn't know I was back or anything like that. I don't talk about it. They don't ask me, I don't talk about it. It's not because I was trying to hide it or anything, it just never came up. But once in a while, if it would come up, I would talk about it.

KL: Did that affect anything with them?

MO: No.

KL: They didn't feel one way or the other toward you?

MO: No, no problem. Those were fun years.

KL: Where was the house? Was it near USC? What neighborhood?

MO: Yeah, it was close to USC. So we walked.

KL: What did you do for fun then? Where did you guys go out, you two, you and Shirley or you and your friends?

MO: A lot of school functions, you know, like their group and our group. Well, in fact, she was in, Nisei Trojan is a co-ed, and her group was just women, ladies. But yeah, we used to go out to movies and things like that.

KL: One of the things that neat about these interviews is to hear what places like Los Angeles were like in the 1930s or the 1950s.

MO: Yeah, you go to restaurants, you go to a nice restaurant, get steak, it's five dollars or something. That was expensive, you know. Now, you go eat a steak like that, thirty dollars or whatever. So you know, it kind of blows your mind.