<Begin Segment 10>

RP: And then you, you were doing, involved in sewing school, and did you, that became your job for a while? You were making clothes?

DI: No, I don't think so.

RP: Then you met up with Tom?

DI: I think, yeah, well, I was going around with him before. I think just to keep me out of mischief, I think he wanted me to go somewhere. [Laughs]

RP: Where did you meet him, in high school?

DI: Well, he used to take, come over to see my sister.

RP: Oh, really? [Laughs] You mean like date her?

DI: I don't know if he ever went out with her or not. [Addressing husband] Did you ever take my sister out? He says, "No." [Laughs] And then she left for Japan. She wanted to go to Japan, and there was another guy kind of interested, and she wasn't interested, and she just decided that since my father was going to Japan quite regularly, she thought maybe she'd go and get an education.

RP: Oh, is that why she went?

DI: And so, and then change of atmosphere and get away from...

RP: So how did she meet James Hamasaki?

DI: I think, I honestly don't know exactly how they met, but he was a student at Meiji University, and he graduated there, and they got together.

RP: And they met there?

DI: Uh-huh, they met in Tokyo.

RP: And so who married you?

DI: Pardon?

RP: Where did you get married and who married you?

DI: We got married at Twentieth and Arizona at the Chapel of the Dawn.

RP: The Chapel of the Dawn?

DI: Yeah, they have funerals there, but they also have weddings. [Laughs] Well, the Buddhist church was a very, just a frame house, and I wanted something a little nicer than that.

RP: So did a Buddhist priest marry you?

DI: Uh-huh, the minister at the...

RP: At the church?

DI: The temple is very nice now. The one on the corner. His father, one of the founders of the church, the temple there, way back in 1923, '24, right? Oh, '26, excuse me. [Laughs]

RP: What do you remember about your wedding day?

DI: I remember it was a nice day -- oh, let's see. It was May the 18th, 1942, right? '41? Wait a minute... December... oh, yeah, because we were married when the war broke out. We were living on Sawtelle Boulevard there. That's right, '41. But then we went to camp in '42, that's it, yeah. Got married in '41, so sixty-seven years. That's a long time. Yeah, better be, 'cause my son is sixty-five years old. [Laughs] Ready to collect social security.

RP: That's pretty close. So you first moved to Sawtelle.

DI: Yeah, we lived right there, 2033 Sawtelle. Then we bought this house. What did we... was it seventy-five hundred? Seventy-five hundred. Can you imagine that? It's so hard to believe.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.