Densho Digital Archive - Miyoko Uzaki Interview (denshovh-umiyoko-01-0021)

<Begin Segment 21>

KL: So that was from 1945 until, when did you say you started attending college?

MU: '48.

KL: What changed to enable you to go to college?

MU: My brother had taken over the farm. And I was free, so I decided to go to college.

KL: Was it your oldest brother who took over?

MU: Tosh?

KL: Was it Tosh?

MU: Uh-huh.

KL: What was college like?

MU: It was kind of overwhelming. [Laughs] Being older, about nine, eight, nine years older than the rest of the kids, students. But I enjoyed it.

KL: What did you study?

MU: In junior college in L.A. I just took the basic, and then I went to, finished up in Seattle.

I took --

KL: What junior college were you in?

MU: Huh?

KL: What junior college did you attend?

MU: Los Angeles Pacific College. It's a church related college. And then, then up in Seattle was a sister college, Seattle Pacific. It's a Free Methodist related college.

KL: And did you have a course of studies in Seattle?

MU: I took college preparatory. Well, I was in college -- I took religion and, general plus religion, yeah.

KL: That must've been interesting to take religion courses about a religion that you had chosen as an adult. What did, what do you remember learning in your religion course, and what was that like?

MU: It was interesting. It was helpful. Growing up, well, my mother was a nominal Christian, but then you got details about what it meant to be a Christian, so it was very helpful.

KL: Were you able to talk with your mother about that, or was the language barrier still...

MU: No, not that much.

KL: So what about after you graduated?

MU: I, my mother hadn't been to Japan for, how many, some thirty years, so I stayed home and took care of my brother, invalid brother, and so she was able to visit her mother and her sisters and others. And then she was able to visit my husband-to-be's mother, parents, their family, because she thought, "My son is going around with some woman that's..." you know, they don't know American young people, Christian young people. So her picture of Nisei was quite different from actual, what it actually was, and so she was very hesitant to give my husband an okay. But my mother went to visit her, and after that she understood a little better, and that was '54. We were married in '55. Yeah, so everything turned out okay. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, that was, that was good timing.

MU: [Laughs] Yeah.

KL: What did your mother say about her trip?

MU: She enjoyed it. She hadn't seen her mother since she left Japan, and then while she was in Beppu, which is the westernmost, western island in Japan, while they were doing, handing out tracts, one girl came while my mother was with her sister and her nephew, and while they were handing out tracts one young girl came and insisted that she be given a tract from this boy, which is my mom's nephew. And it turned out to be his sister who was given away to be adopted, and so that was quite an incident.

KL: And your mom witnessed it. Wow.

MU: Yeah, and my mother witnessed it.