Densho Digital Archive - Mary Suzuki Ichino Interview I (denshovh-imary-01-0007)

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RP: Was your father back in the restaurant business this first --

MI: Yeah.

RP: -- stop in Los Angeles?

MI: He did. But when, when we first came... you know, I was here first. And I suppose they were kind of worried because I was by myself here. My dad came out and he took and found odd jobs. And then he lived at that Hongwanji Buddhist Church. That became a hostel. That was the one across the street from the museum, now the present museum. And that's where he had a place to stay.

RP: This was after...

MI: This was after the war.

RP: After the war.

MI: Yeah. And that's how he gradually got himself built up again. So he was already in his, what, close to sixty?

[Interruption]

RP: Mary, when did your mother begin her college work in costume designing?

MI: Let's see, probably 1939.

RP: Oh, a little later on.

MI: And '40... yeah. 'Cause I was still going to Sacred Heart when she used to bring home her assignment. And where she couldn't understand it or read it, generally speak it in the evening, after I did my homework, I was doing her homework. And I, there was kind of a standing joke with my mother. I said, "I know what. Actually, half of that degree belongs to me." Because I did all the interpreting for her. [Laughs] And, but she graduated. But you know when she graduated, they had a graduation picture, and there was two Asian women, my mother and another woman, and their faces were blocked out. Imagine?

RP: Oh.

MI: Isn't that crazy?

RP: That is crazy. Again, another sort of window into the times.

MI: Yeah, it really, really is.

RP: This was just before the war then.

MI: Yeah.

RP: What, 1939, '40?

MI: Yeah, you know that's, when you think of it, that's really troubling, you know. And why... if it happened today there would be an uproar. It's just like those, the students that put different names under their yearbook. Did you read that recently? They're just really making that into a big old thing. Well, you know, here it is, something identical happened.

RP: Did she have any difficulties getting in to the college being an Issei?

MI: I don't, no, it doesn't seem like it. I think, you know what, I think it was a lot easier to get in at that time. I think it, I think when the population increased in Los Angeles and California, is when things got really tough, more selective.