<Begin Segment 13>

RP: You graduated and the next year you were married.

NM: Yeah, right away.

RP: And, and you were married I imagine in the Mesa Methodist church?

NM: The wedding ceremony was at a, my home, at home. I don't know why we didn't use the church.

RP: Did you have the whole community there?

NM: I don't, I don't recall who were there. But probably not too many. Well, it was wasn't a very large community anyway. Of course we had to have a go-between.

RP: Baishakunin?

NM: Oh, yeah.

RP: And who was that?

Off Camera: Who was it?

RP: Who was the baishakunin?

NM: The Nakatsus, N-A-K-A-T-S-U.

RP: Uh-huh.

NM: And Kawamotos. K-A-W-A-M-O-T-O.

Off Camera: They didn't live in...

NM: What?

Off Camera: Nakatsus lived in Tempe.

NM: Yes, they lived in Tempe. But they were old friends of ours.

RP: They were.

NM: But, but they, their name came in after we were engaged and all. It was just a...

RP: Formality?

NM: Formality, tradition.

RP: Not like it would have been in Japan.

NM: No.

RP: With all the sort of going over records and, and inspections and...

NM: Yeah. Well, I think they went over the records. I think my father checked up on my husband's family in Japan. Or he had a friend look it up and found out that, "Oh yeah, they're okay." [Laughs]

[Interruption]

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Nellie Okazaki Mitani. And Nellie, we were talking about the circumstances that brought you and your husband together. You were mentioning about the baishakunin and everything. Your father approved of, of this, of your husband, and things went forward and where did you, do you remember going on a honeymoon first of all?

NM: Well, I guess you'd call it, uh-huh.

RP: Where did you go?

NM: We went to Tucson and spent a few days, that was all.

RP: Uh-huh. How did you take to the, the southwest, the desert country? Did you, did you embrace that landscape or was it a hot place and just...

NM: Well, I guess I didn't know any better. I mean, I was born there and just grew into it. And yes, it was very hot during the summers. But we still had to work. We grew vegetables that ripened in the summertimes so... or we had to plant them in the heat of the summer. July and August was planting time.

RP: What would you plant then? What would you plant?

NM: We'd plant, oh, in the later years it was like carrots, mostly carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach. Oh, any kind, turnips and beets and all, all kinds of truck vegetables. And we had some citrus. But, earlier, before that, I guess when we were very young, my father specialized in melons.

RP: And so you got married in the summer of 1941, and then you moved to Bakersfield?

NM: Yes. We were assigned to Bakersfield Church, Japanese church.

RP: So, Bakersfield is kind of a semi-arid area, too, but it's a very agricultural area.

NM: Yes, that's right.

RP: And so you settled in Bakersfield and that was just before the war broke out.

NM: Yes, yes. We didn't quite settle. We were just beginning to settle down.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.