Densho Digital Archive - Masako Murakami Interview

<Begin Segment 12>

LP: So getting, sort of fast forwarding a little bit, being short on time, but could you talk about leaving Tule Lake, what you remember about that, and then jumping a tiny bit to your role as a docent here and all?

MM: Well, when we came back to San Francisco, we lived in Hunter's Point. And then I don't know how long we lived there, maybe months, and then we moved to a boarding house, and we lived in one room for a while, shared bathrooms with other people on the floor. And then we moved into a rental place, and then my parents eventually bought a home. And my father... my mother, it was tough for them to get a job, but my mother was employed as a seamstress at KORET California, which at the time was a growing business. And she was probably the first Japanese hired there, so they had misgivings about, hesitant about hiring. But then once she was hired, then there were a lot of Japanese people hired there. Then my father went to work there also, although he was working other places as a bookkeeper, and he became the personal bookkeeper for Mrs. Koret, or Mr. Koret, I guess. And they both retired from there years and years afterwards. And my sister and I went to Pacific High School, then I went to Lowell High School and then she went to Poly and then we both went to Cal.

And I moved down here when I got married, and then I was widowed in 1979, so I think I started volunteering for, after my children all became college age. I started volunteering here in 1986, probably the oldest volunteer here. Not in age, but in years. And so we used to raise funds, it was just a thought in minds of the people, so it was really hard to find donors, but they all donated for a dream. And we were starting, and when I started to volunteer was, we were in Third Street in offices, and then we'd have committees and groups, and we'd go out and ask people for money, and people would give. It was amazing. You'd get a name on the wall if you put three thousand dollars or something like that, or you would get a name on the window or on the concrete, but this wasn't even here. So then we got the, we moved into the old Nishi Hongwanji where they used that for a meeting point for a lot of people who went to camps from here. And we had our first exhibit there, and then we had fundraising for this building, and then we moved into here. So I've been here a long time.