<Begin Segment 7>

AL: How did you meet your husband?

YN: I went to the West Los Angeles United Methodist church, because that's where my cousins were going, and my husband was going there also. His family was quite prominent in the church, and he sang in the choir, and he wanted me to sing in the choir. And there was a group that would meet after, that would go out for lunch afterwards, so that's how I met my husband.

AL: So you did not come to California with him, you came... I mean, you were in California, you met him here?

YN: Because he's a Californian.

AL: Okay. What year did you get married?

YN: In 1969.

AL: Yeah, I know that there's a number of people from West Los Angeles Methodist Church who were in Manzanar and have remained involved in Manzanar. I don't know if you've come on the field trips where they bring a bus up to come back to Manzanar, usually in the fall. It's a very vibrant community.

YN: Uh-huh, with Rose Honda and Haru Nakata and the Nishi family. We've never done that one.

AL: So you went to... you said you'd gotten your master's degree. Could you just tell us a little bit about your own school and which schools you went to, where you went to high school?

YN: I went to school through eighth grade in Deer Park, but we didn't have a high school, so I went to Babylon High School.

AL: What was it called?

YN: Babylon, B-A-B-Y-L-O-N.

AL: Oh, okay, like the tower.

YN: Like the town of Babylon.

AL: Were they all speaking different languages? [Laughs]

YN: No, that's Babel. [Laughs]

AL: Oh, yeah.

YN: Yeah, so I graduated from there. And then I went on to what was at that time called State University of New York at Oyster Bay, it was a temporary campus that eventually moved to Stonybrook, and now it is called Stonybrook University, it's part of the state university system.

AL: And what did you study?

YN: I studied math, I was a math major.

AL: And you said you got your master's and you were also a teacher?

YN: Yes, I was able to get a National Science Foundation grant to continue. And so while I was teaching I'd go at night to Adelphi University and got my master's in math education.

AL: Did either of your sisters or your brother come back to California before you could come back, or you just came back to your cousins and aunts and uncles?

YN: I was the first to come back. And my brother, let's see, he went to college for a few years and decided that he was going to join the army. So he did that, and when he was finished, he was discharged, he came to... I think it was San Jose, San Jose State and finished with school.

AL: And your parents, when they, when you were coming back to California, did they share any insight or advice, or were they just ship you out to family? Was there a feeling when you were the first one coming back? That's a long way away.

YN: Well, it was. But I had kind of decided that's what I wanted to do. And I think they were disappointed because my younger sister was still in high school, I was teaching in a high school. And so if I had stayed maybe another year she had before she graduated, that would have been probably better. But I don't know why, I just thought it was the time.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.