<Begin Segment 26>

KL: So when did you leave Gila River? It says in the roster August 27, 1945. Was it pretty late?

EY: Yeah, I think so because it wasn't, I think it was kind of in the fall kind of thing. And we all each got twenty-five dollars apiece, and okay, you're free to go where you want to go kind of thing. And since my father had already expressed his desire to go to Los Angeles, I said, "Okay, we're not going back home to Snoqualmie, and that's fine with me." And so we got there... I don't know how he found a place for us to stay, but it was with this Jewish family in Pasadena, and Grandpa lived with them. And I forgot what the father of the house did for a living, but he had a nice house in Pasadena, and he was willing to take all... see, four of us, 'cause my brother next to me was in Chicago just before he was inducted. So there was just the four of us. My brother Gary and my folks and myself, so there was four of us, so Grandpa took three of them, my mom and dad and then my brother Gary. And he even told my brother that his job was to make sure the wastebaskets were always empty every day. That's all he had to do, and he also wanted my brother to take a musical instrument, so they had a piano, a grand piano. So my grandpa made arrangements for my brother to go to the piano teacher and learn now to play piano. He was so gracious about that. So my brother, that's how he got trained to play piano, and that was his recreation. But we were very impressed because he didn't have to do that, but Grandpa wanted to do that for my brother. Because my brother liked to sing, too, so maybe he heard him humming or something, and I guess he decided that no, Gary, he just can't go to school and just do nothing. So that's how he learned to play the piano. But after that, then in the meantime, I looked for a job in a home, too, and worked for a Jewish family in Pasadena. But they decided to take a vacation the first two weeks of when school started, Pasadena junior college. So after I registered and I got my books, then I came back and I went to school. But I had to catch up because I lost ten days already. And I stayed up and studied 'til one, two o'clock in the morning, and finally by the tenth day, it was just too much, I couldn't catch up. So finally I had to quit. In the meantime, over here my mom was calling me saying, "We need money, we have to survive, we can't live like this." So I finally quit college, and then I moved to another home and I worked, this was in Beverly Hills, I worked for a producer who made horror films. It was a teenager, so I had to kind of keep an eye on them, son and daughter. Stayed there for a while. And I moved again to another home in Beverly Hills, and then the man of the house was working for his father who invented the first nylon hosiery.

KL: We owe him so much.

EY: Yeah. I still have a couple pairs that he made, and I haven't worn it, it's still there. Anyway, so I was all around general person, and they had a nanny from, I think she was from Scotland, and she took care of two little ones. And one day she said, "Eiko, let me..." we were having tea, and she said, "Eiko, let me have a look at your tea leaves." I said, "What for?" She said, "I want to see it," so I did. And she looked at it and she said, "One of these days you're going to meet a fellow from the north," she says. I don't know anybody from the north, so I let it go. [Laughs] Then I was at my girlfriend's place, she was also a housemaid at another place, and her parents were well-to-do, that they were able to put a down on a home in... there's a section in L.A. But it was a small house, but it was their own. And so my friend would go home on the Thursday, we all got a day off on Thursday, maid's day off on Thursday. So she said, "Why don't you come visit me and relax at my mom's house?" I said, okay, so I got on the bus and I went over there. And she was there, so while she was there, we visited with her brothers, and then Jim comes along, and he knew the brothers. And at the time, I thought, oh gee, he seems like a pretty nice guy, but that was it. So anyway, we all went back to work, and six months later. But in the meantime, my father decided that he didn't want to work for the family, so he found a place to stay in Japantown in Los Angeles. And it was in the slum area, and the man had enough money to put a down on this hotel in that section off of First Street in Los Angeles. And he made the lobby into two rooms, so the man agreed to let my father rent this two rooms. One was the bedroom, the front part, and then the other part was my bedroom, which was just army cot, and it became a kitchen and living room, which was okay, because I was just, I was the only daughter, so it didn't matter. Anyway, one day the hotel owner knocks on the door and said, "There's a telephone call for you." Said, "I don't know anybody." Said, "Well, anyway, there's a telephone call." And he says, "This is Jim," says, "Okay." So he says, "I want to come by someday." "Okay, that's fine." Okay, so I'm going about my life, I was working at a produce house where they handle wholesale produce, the produce market. So this one evening, I'd just taken my bath, got into my pajamas, and I rolled up my hair, I had long hair then. And I rolled it up, put it in curlers, and I was ready to hop in bed. Then I get a knock on the door, and I peeked in, there was Jimi with another friend. I said, "Oh, my god," I just slammed the door, took the curlers off my hair, jumped out of my pajamas and wore my everyday clothes, and I said, "Okay, come on in," kind of a thing, you know. [Laughs] And then we started going out together, and he always had a friend named George, and those two guys, they were close friends. And so wherever we'd go, there was always three of us. That was fine. And we'd go to a restaurant, we'd ordered food, and George and I are slow eaters, but Jimi comes from a large family. And we're still working on our first food, our dinner yet, and I think he felt a little embarrassed so he ordered another entree. To this day I still talk about that. And then by the time he finished his entree, we were finally finished with our first one. So we talk about that a lot. And then took me to Santa Monica, and Frank Sinatra was just getting started, skinny kid, and he's up there, and Tommy Dorsey was laying, you know, that band leader? Then Tommy Dorsey started to sing "Stardust," are you familiar with "Stardust," that song?

LP: I think so.

EY: Anyway, he started singing "Stardust" and we were dancing, and then I guess that became our theme song. And after that, six months, we went around together, and six months we were engaged, and then we were married, here we are. [Laughs] Anyway, it was a short romance, but we've been together sixty-nine years now, so I guess it's okay.

KL: What year was it that you married?

EY: '49. 1949.

KL: Where did you guys live right after you were married?

EY: Here in San Jose. In fact, we got married in the Buddhist church, that minister, he speaks more Japanese than English, so in his so-called broken English, he married us, but I didn't know what he was saying, 'cause his accent was so offbeat. But at the end, I guess, I figured, okay, we're married. That was funny, we talk about that, too.

KL: Did you ever find out what you promised during the ceremony?

EY: No, we just took it for granted. And we didn't have a place to stay, so my father-in-law, they still had the ranch, so the bunkhouse. Actually, during the war, the bunkhouse housed the workers that were helping the people who kind of rented the ranch while we were incarcerated, and then also it became a chicken coop. So then when the family returned, the renters were still there, so they had no place to go, so they had to live in the chicken coop. SO they had to clean that bunkhouse chicken coop, cleaned it all out, and then they lived there, all eight of them. Because two girls got married in camp, so eight of them lived there. And then when we got married, then parents were already, the family was already in the main house, so we had this bunkhouse, and then we had the outhouse. So the this bunkhouse became our so-called honeymoon house. We didn't have any money, we were so poor, between the both of us we didn't have any money. So we had to have a bed to sleep on, so we bought six peach cans, #2, and we put it on the floor, and we put a springboard, that's all we could afford. We couldn't afford the mattress itself, just the spring, so we slept on that for a while until he earned enough to buy the mattress. So that's how we got started. [Laughs]

KL: And the bunkhouse was here in San Jose?

EY: Yeah, it's still... no, it's gone now because they sold the property and not their homes, they're not... in various...

KL: I have a few questions about your life in San Jose because I know you're involved in a lot. But backing up there a few more from what you said, you mentioned that Sam, your brother, went into the military in Chicago?

EY: Yeah. He was inducted from there, but I don't know which infantry or what he belonged to. We just don't communicate, so I never knew. But I remember my auntie was saying that he had a hard time getting up in the morning, so she'd always wake him up every morning. So she said, "I don't know how he did that in the army, because boy, in the army, you don't oversleep, right? So we had no idea how he managed it.

KL: The repercussions may have been more serious in the army.

EY: Could be.

KL: Was he drafted?

EY: Yeah, he was drafted.

KL: Was he ever deployed, was he part of the occupation of Japan?

EY: No idea, nothing.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.