Densho Digital Archive - Midori Suzuki - Sanzui A. Takaha Interview (denshovh-smidori

<Begin Segment 32>

KL: Sat, what did you do with your time when you came out of the army and back to California?

ST: Oh, I went to school, went back to school.

KL: What did you study?

ST: Huh?

KL: What did you study?

ST: I don't know. Trigonometry and physics. I forget. By then, my older siblings were all getting married, so I had to quit school and get a job to look after my parents.

KL: What was your job?

ST: Simmons Company, furniture. My brother was working there, he got me a job there.

MS: I thought you went directly to the post office. You didn't?

ST: No.

MS: Oh, I didn't know you went to Simmons.

KL: What was your job at Simmons?

ST: In the wood shop, made frames for box springs and things like that. And I was also a handyman's helper, and he'd just go around fixing things, and I helped him. So it was pretty nice.

MS: He's talking about Akira, the other brother, the one that was 4-F, because he went to Simmons after.

KL: Who helped find the job? Yeah. Was it tough to find work?

ST: Oh, yeah, at that time. Got laid off a couple times. Oh, so I was at the post office, oh, nationwide, you know, to replace all the women that took over the men's job. So there was a lot of openings. So I took the exam and got a job. And I stayed there for thirty-eight years.

KL: Did you like your work at the post office, or what did you think of it?

ST: Yeah, it was all right.

KL: Those women who were leaving the jobs...

ST: Oh, a lot of them stayed. They take the exam, too, and they passed it. So yeah, quite a few women.

KL: Did they ever talk to you about what it was like to enter the career world during World War II?

ST: Not that I can recall, no.

KL: They were just colleagues. So you had a career with the post office. What did the rest of your family end up doing, all of you guys who were siblings were kind of young adults or just coming into...

ST: They're still in school, you know, my sisters.

MS: Then Hattie got out of school after she got out of City College, and she got a job working at the San Francisco, the UC San Francisco hospital, which is where she met her husband, who was a dental student. And Mickie, she went to work for J. Barth & Company, and it was, you know, the people in Hillsborough. Mr. Keyston, who used to be the president of the San Francisco stock exchange, and J. Barth & Company was a stock company. So I think he got her the job at J. Barth. So until then the boys were sending allotment home to our parents for them to have money. I think all three of you were sending allotment money. So when he came home... well, Tsuki was helping support them. And then he came home, and he kind of took over our parents' care, because by then the brothers were all getting married. And then he and Mickie and Hattie were supporting them until they got married and went away. And then he got married and she was taking care of my kids, too. Then she lived with us.

KL: Your mother?

MS: Yeah. Our father passed away when we were still in Candlestick. Then the oldest brother Yoneji came home. He was, I think, in the service for something like twenty-five years or so. But when he came home, then she moved in with him. Then she passed away when she was living with him.

KL: Was it difficult finding housing in those years in the late '40s?

MS: Yes. There were a lot of areas where the Japanese couldn't buy yet, also.

ST: I bought my first house in '54, mostly for my mother.

MS: But I know you looked out in the Westlake area and you weren't allowed to buy yet in that area.

KL: How did you find out that Westlake was a closed area?

ST: Oh, the realtors wouldn't show you anything there anyway.

KL: Why were you considering living there? What drew you to Westlake?

ST: Consider Westlake? I don't think so.

MS: Yeah, early on, I think you just saw...

ST: Yeah, there was a lot of building going on.

MS: I know there was, I think you inquired, and somehow they told you that you weren't allowed. So there was still areas that you couldn't buy.

ST: Even Shoreview.

MS: Hmm?

ST: Even Shoreview.

MS: Really?

ST: Yeah.

MS: Oh, I didn't know that.

KL: Where did you end up buying the house?

ST: In San Mateo, where she's living now.

MS: He sold me his house.

KL: Oh, wow.

MS: With my mother in it. [Laughs] Well, she was helping take care of my kids anyway, so it worked out well.

KL: How long did she live?

ST: '75, 1975. Eighty.

MS: Just short of eighty.

KL: Did she ever pursue U.S. citizenship once that became available?

ST: I don't think so.

KL: I meant to ask you earlier and then got sidetracked, why your family was the last to leave Topaz besides that other person. Can you tell us how and why that happened?

MS: Well, mainly because with the boys gone, I'm sure my mother was thinking, "How are we gonna live?" Because Father was pretty ill by then, and she had to take care of him. So there was no visible means of income for her. So she figured, "They put me here, they've got to take care of me, so we'll just stay as long as we can." So that's what we did. And I think Tsuki kind of stayed back just to kind of help look after them. And I was the baby, and so I got to stay, too, with Mommy. [Laughs]

KL: And then what convinced her to finally leave?

MS: Because we were told we had to leave, that we couldn't stay anymore. And I'm sure it was difficult for the boys, because they arranged for the allotment to go to her, so that left them with very little spending money for their own needs also, right? Must have been pretty slim.

ST: We didn't need anything in the army. You were fed and clothed.

MS: And housed.

KL: It's kind of interesting. You were working in the post office in the army, and then continued that as a career, and that some of your sisters who worked in the hospital in Topaz, your sister continued working in the medical field, in the hospital in San Francisco.

MS: She was just a teenager when she worked in the hospital in camp. And she was doing secretarial work at the hospital.

KL: It was a different thing.

MS: And she eventually went back to school, and she was a schoolteacher.

KL: Did you have a career?

MS: I had a husband. [Laughs] No, I worked at various jobs, too. When we were in Hunter's Point, I also did schoolgirl jobs to kind of help with the finances, and then I did secretarial work, various secretarial work. And that's it.