Densho Digital Archive - Sumiye Takeno Interview (denshovh-tsumiye-01-0018)

<Begin Segment 18>

RP: And how did you feel about Denver when you got settled in here?

ST: I thought Denver was a very nice place.

RP: Was there a Japanese American community already set up here?

ST: Uh-huh. Because he was with newspaper, you do meet a lot of Japanese here, too. And of course since I grew up in a Japanese community it made me a little bit at home. I didn't feel as I was in a strange place. So, I was very easily situated here.

RP: Now Roy and you were kind of a, a team as far as these stories go. He'd have an idea and then you...

ST: Oh yes.

RP: Tell us about what you did.

ST: I did all the calls for him. Find out all their personal life or information. I did all the calls for him and got the information. I was able to do that, thankfully. And then so he would write the story out of that. So I had to be very accurate. But we, it was nice to know that I could help him.

RP: And what kind of stories did Roy tend to want to, tend to like to write? Human interest stories, kind of feature stories about...

ST: Yeah, I think several, several aspects of stories. But I think he liked to write about people and that was easy for me to get information. Others he had to look for it himself. But for about people, I called most of them for him and got the information.

RP: And you, and you had a chance to get to know them, too?

ST: Uh-huh, yes. That was a good time to get to know them because I was a stranger here.

RP: Right.

ST: And they were all very nice.

RP: And, of course another theme of your life has been your involvement with Methodist, the Methodist church. Did you find a Methodist church in Denver that you could kind of settle into?

ST: Oh yeah. I think we felt at home because we knew the minister from before. At least my husband did because he was from Los Angeles. And no, it was very easy to get acquainted with Denver, and become part of Denver. I didn't feel very lonely or anything. I thought I would.