<Begin Segment 17>

KL: So how long did you stay in Chicago?

JO: We stayed until 1952 when my father was transferred. He asked for a transfer, and they finally granted him a transfer to work in Los Angeles, which made my mother very happy, because she'd finally get to go home to her family, be with her family. Her mother, father, sisters, brother.

KL: So did everybody from your mother's family end up back in California?

JO: Eventually. But two of the sisters came out to Chicago, and my aunt Kimi, and my aunt Sally. My aunt Sally was married in camp.

KL: Did you attend?

JO: Yeah.

KL: Where was the wedding?

JO: At the Catholic church. Her husband was Catholic, so they got married at the Catholic church. And actually my mother made, I think she made... well, she made their hats, I know she made their hats, and I don't know if she made their gowns. She may have made their gowns.

KL: Who is her husband?

JO: My aunt's husband was Mas Okabe, the Okabe family, that's another group that was there in Manzanar.

KL: Yeah. I know a different Mas Okabe, that's interesting. Okay.

JO: Mas Okabe, well, you mean... he owned a fish store after the war.

KL: And they went to Chicago also?

JO: Yes, for a brief time, and then he came back to L.A. They all actually returned to L.A. You know, when everybody was able to return back to L.A., they all went back.

KL: What was your dad's job?

JO: He was a draftsman for American Brake Shoe.

KL: And that's what he started in New York?

JO: Well, he got the job in New York and they transferred him to Chicago and paid his way back to Chicago, because, of course, he didn't have any money. [Laughs] And then he went to work, and he worked there until he retired, for American Brake Shoe, but that was in Los Angeles. It was a larger company in Chicago. What American Brake Shoe did, really couldn't understand. He would draw, he would be drafting, drawing, the frogs and switches for railroads. What? Never knew what it meant, but...

KL: Yeah, brake shoes are weird.

JO: So it's the frogs and switches for the railroad tracks that he would draw.

KL: What was it like for you to be back living in California?

JO: For me, we skipped over a lot of my life in Chicago, because, see, after I graduated high school I went to the University of Illinois, Navy Pier, for a year. So I was a college student. And then I transferred to UCLA. And, of course, I wanted to go to SC, but we didn't have the money, so I went to UCLA. And UCLA charged non-resident fees at that time, so my father objected to that, and he asked for an appeal, and they said, "Well, you didn't come back soon enough." But you know, a lot of it has to do with whether you have a job or not, so he wanted to make sure he had a job. So I had to pay non-resident fee for a year, which was two hundred dollars a year, two hundred dollars. And tuition, of course, was free in those days. So if you had to pay the resident, non-resident fee of a hundred and ninety-nine dollars a semester, it was quite a bit of money. I think it was a semester, must have been a semester.

KL: So did you graduate from UCLA?

JO: Yes, I graduated from UCLA.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.