Densho Digital Archive - Kazuko Miyoshi - Yasuko Miyoshi Iseri Interview (denshovh-mkazuko

<Begin Segment 27>

KL: What were your... I just want to hear kind of highlights from what you guys have done with the rest of your lives as far as education, and start with Kazuko.

KM: Well, I went to Venice High, well, started at Betsy Ross, Palms junior high, Venice, and I attended UCLA. And then I went to become a lab tech, and I worked for that business for many a year. And then I retired from UCLA, I worked there as a lab tech.

KL: Oh, that's where you worked for your career?

KM: Until I retired. And then I worked for Sylvia for a while, too.

KL: Who is Sylvia, for the people who will watch this in later years and not be present?

KM: That one over there. And then my brother-in-law, Joe, he worked for Sylvia. And we used to have such a good time at work, but a friend of ours said, "You know, the best years of my life were working at that hospital." Not UCLA, but where Sylvia was, which was...

KL: Why was it so good? What made it so good?

KM: Because we had Joe.

YI: They picked on my husband.

KM: And became one of the girls. We'd make him do all kinds of funny things. We just enjoyed one another. So Gloria says, "God, those were the best years of my life as far as work when." Then she went to Kaiser, I went to UCLA because they kept buying and selling the hospital. And then we all retired and had a good time. And then I got my condition, which was not a good time. It was not a good time, but that's the way the cookie went. And here I am, telling my tale of my past.

KL: I'm so glad you are.

KM: With my wonderful family and my sister and my three brothers. And I've got my brother-in-law Joe.

KL: Oh, yeah, your littlest brother, when was he born, and tell us his name on tape.

KM: His name is Kunio Carl Miyoshi. See, my father was Frank Shigeyoshi, and then my middle brother is Frank Tatsuoki Miyoshi, and then my brother Ichiro Miyoshi and my baby brother Kunio Carl. He never went by his American name.

KL: What does he think about your Manzanar experiences?

KM: He's very aware, and he instilled in his children -- he's got three girls -- to be aware of this background.

YI: I think he's more excited about it than we are. I mean, he really, he's been there several times, and he takes the girls, they're adults, and he just marvels at that depression in the ground, that we lived there, the four of us, the family. And he does appreciate the hardship and what my parents went through.

KL: Could you kind of, just like Kazuko did, just fill us in on your education, career, family stuff that you've experienced?

YI: Oh, me? Well, I went to Venice High, and then I just went a year to Santa Monica City College. And then I did several things that I won't mention. [Laughs] Then I met Joe through Kazy, they were going to UCLA.

KL: It's all my fault, I brought her home, brought him home.

YI: And then we got married. And I did work for the railroad as a hearing reporter, for discipline, and that was Southern Pacific Railroad. And, in fact, I retired from there. I went there after my kids were a little grown, so I didn't go there 'til, I think, '77. And I retired when I was fifty-seven years old, and Joe retired, my husband retired just before me, two years. And we had three kids. Well, I was thinking of my girls, the four grandchildren, and very happy, can't complain. Good retirement.

KL: What are your kids' and your grandchildren's awareness and thoughts about Manzanar?

YI: My daughter, my son works for Huntington Beach police department as a mechanic. My daughter is a schoolteacher in Long Beach.

KL: What are their names?

YI: Oh, Karen, Kenny, and then Karen is a schoolteacher, and Robin is in insurance, she's an VP, but I don't want to say what her title is. And they have, Kenny has none, Karen has two girls, one going to be twenty-one and one in Europe right now, sixteen, and then Robin has two girls, one gonna go to college at Dominguez, she'll be a junior, and then the second one is just graduating high school, gonna go to Fullerton. So I've got 'em all on the road. They're good kids.

KL: What are... I guess, first Joe, and this is another one of those weird questions like with Sylvia because I know the answer to this, but for others watching the tape, what were Joe's thoughts about your Manzanar experience?

YI: Well, because he was in Heart Mountain, they had it more difficult. Because he sees pictures of Manzanar, and it's grass, we have gardens, harsh, harsh where he was. I mean, they barely had enough water, they couldn't have a garden, certainly, you know, where they were. And he says it was not, you know, we had a refrigerator, we had some nice things compared to what they had. So I think that he thinks we kind of had it soft.

KM: We did.

KL: Do you see generational differences, or how do your kids think about your Manzanar experiences?

YI: My son is really into it. He thinks that we need to pay the respect and so forth and so on. The other two, I don't think Robin's been there. Karen has, Karen's been there a couple of times. But it was just where Grandma was. I don't think they feel it yet. But the one that really feels what Manzanar was all about was Kuni, my youngest brother. He really, he thinks that... and it was his daughter that put this book together. That we could have lived there, that this had happened to us, and did they think like my parents were passive because they went? There was no choice. This was law, you know. It wasn't like we want to go to camp, I mean, it was something dictated by law. We had no choice.

KM: There were some dissenters around, Korematsu, one of the more famous.

KL: Have you guys had encounters with any of those people, Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi?

YI: No, but I respect him for doing it. I mean, he had a point, and he was a citizen. How can you put a citizen in incarceration for being a citizen? But like my mother's view, that's how I think, too, that we were safer inside the camp. So it had to be.