<Begin Segment 10>

RP: So you met your husband in Terminal Island.

MS: Terminal Island, uh-huh.

RP: And he was involved with the fishing industry?

MS: Uh-huh. He had brother, let's see, he had three brothers, sister in college, so he went to two years of community college and he wanted to go to college, but he, at twenty-one he quit to support his family. 'Cause fishing was very lucrative those days, so he was able to get on a fishing boat and he supported his family. So he never got his degree, but he studied as engineer, so he was well informed, so he worked for Fuller Corporation and then he finally worked for, he ended up by working with Honeywell in marine system division. And what was the other one? Azuma that, they have air base up in Sacramento. Mac, Mac... not, Aero Jet, is it?

RP: Aero Jet.

MS: Uh-huh. So he worked for them, too, but I didn't know 'til later. A friend of his keeps corresponding, would talk about things they did and they did, they worked on the second phase of the, when they went to the moon, 'cause we were, we were all saying, "Oh, they're not gonna make it." But he said, "We're gonna make it. We're gonna make it," because, I didn't know that, all this come out now, but this friend, Ichimura, he wrote to me now. He said, "You know, we worked on it," and my husband never talked about it, but they had something to do with that second phase of the astronaut, the flight to the moon, and he kept saying, "Oh, they'll get it." He was, they were confident, but we wouldn't believe it, it could happen. So he worked as engineer. He wanted to finish school, but luckily we had a neighbor whose husband was, he was one of the CEOs or whatever of the Fuller Corporation, and he got in there as an engineer and he, that's why he was fishing until he could find a job, but after the war he couldn't find a job. They, they wouldn't hire Japanese. In fact, we couldn't even rent a house. So finally his schoolmate, he was a Caucasian man that he went to school with, and he had a home and he said, well his tenants, it was only forty dollars a month, but his tenants were behind, and he said he'd evict them, and so then we finally found a house to live in. Then finally, we worked and I saved every penny while he's working as a engineer and all that, and we finally found a home. Took us nine years to save enough money. We saved, I think we saved five thousand dollars in nine years in those days, and that was enough for a down payment. I got all my furniture in that house in Anaheim which we lived in for fifty-five years. It's still there.

RP: You said you had difficulty renting a home. Was that because --

MS: To buy a home, we had trouble buying a home, too, so we looked around in Anaheim and some of 'em wouldn't sell to Orientals. So finally we found a house and we looked at it and the people that built it, that, they built in a section, it was a man that he knew from before, way back, so he built it but he had salesmen, so finally we looked at it and they said it was three thousand dollar down -- that was big money those days, and so they were anxious to sell it. So finally my husband says, "You gonna sell the house to us?" And he looked puzzled. The salesman didn't know. So he said, "Well, we have trouble finding a house because they won't sell to us." So he came back couple days later. He said there's no problem. There was a phrase in, there was a phrase in there not to sell to Mexicans or Orientals in that thing, whatever they have, but then he said he went around the neighbors that were already there. We were the only Japanese looking for a house, and he said none of 'em objected. In fact, the man across the street was a major in the service and he says, he says, "They're better than other people," so we finally were able to buy, but we, we got turned down. It's in the, whatever the sales, whatever it is, but we finally found that house, and so...

RP: I wanted to go back to Terminal Island just for a little bit. Your, your husband actually, what did he do on the fishing boats? He was, he actually...

MS: Well, he sort of navigated and he fished, did the fishing, too.

RP: And what type of boat did he work on?

MS: It's a, they caught, baited tuna. They fished for the Van de Kamp fishery and the Starkist. They were fishing for them.

RP: Oh, he would go out for, for...

MS: They'd go out for days at a time. First they would, they caught it locally, but you know fish towns, so they went south and he'd be gone for maybe two, three weeks sometimes. They'd take all the food and everything. Now, now you can't get any fish in this area. They go clear down to, what is it? Sao Paolo? That's in South America, is it? And Australia, to get the tuna now. We have a friend that has a big tuna clipper, fishing down there, and they fish, all the Van de Kamp, all that, it's packed down there. It's not packed locally anymore. You ever look where it's made? It's, it's a good business, if you can get...

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.