Densho Digital Archive - Ayako Tsurutani Interview (denshovh-tayako-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: So your husband went out to Washington?

AT: Yeah.

RP: And was hired by the OSS?

AT: Yeah. Uh-huh.

RP: And did you follow him to Washington?

AT: Yeah. Well, we went on that car, the...

RP: The car.

AT: Yeah. And the first night we stayed with the Bruces. And she gave us dinner and then, and Bruce says, "Where's the geta?" [Laughs] He thought we'd take a shower with the geta on. And then I think they loaned us a mattress 'cause we couldn't take any of that. Oh, and then, oh every so often we'd visit them. And they'd invite us to dinner. I think one Christmas we shared the day with them. So it was nice.

RP: What was Mr. Bruce doing after he left Manzanar?

AT: He was working at the U.N. in San Francisco. And that's where my husband met him (again). And so they got together until, until my... no, I think Bill moved someplace else. And he finally divorced Henrietta and they had three really nice kids.

RP: And you lived in Virginia was it --

AT: Uh-huh.

RP: -- for a while?

AT: Was it Alexandria or... I think it was Alexandria. And it's just an empty apartment. We didn't, we didn't have any furniture so we had to use boxes. All we had was the bed. And I think that bed was from the Bruces, bed and the mattress. And at Christmas he, Bruce would see those trees with the decorations on it and he said he wanted a tree like that. And we didn't, we didn't have, we couldn't bring any of our decorations so we cut out pieces of the, from the soup bags, they had the little colored. We put that on... oh, and a neighbor, they were working with my husband's place too. So they had extra lights and they loaned us the lights for the tree. But the little decorations were little paper that we cut out. Yeah.

RP: And your husband was moved around a number of times.

AT: (Yes), they were there until (they were) moved to San Francisco. They were stationed in that one.

RP: In Washington?

AT: I guess they call it... not a... anyways it's a big house, estate I think, so. And then named Collingwood.

RP: And he was doing some kind of hush-hush work, wasn't he?

At: Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, I had an idea what it was.

RP: What was it?

AT: I think it had something to do with radio and... well, they didn't have television then. But I think he's really a lot of... he helped on the English section and there were a lot of other people that did the Japanese. And I don't know how they took the pictures here, how they knew about it.

RP: Right. And he eventually was sent to Japan?

AT: Yeah.

RP: To work there?

AT: Uh-huh. Those... I don't know, I don't think the whole section was sent but they just took certain people. And then he said that he talked to all different types of people.

RP: Was he interpreting too there?

AT: (Interviewing).

RP: Did he ever end up in Hiroshima?

AT: Yeah. He took pictures. I mean, he had pictures taken there.

RP: Just after the bomb was dropped?

AT: Yeah, uh-huh. We went to Japan in '85 or maybe we, maybe it was the American people, tour, and they were afraid to go to Hiroshima. We didn't want to go there so none of us went there. These Caucasians had gone there before. They said they didn't speak to them but they, they felt pretty bad. And we felt sorry for them so we didn't want to go. In fact, even Hawaii we felt so bad that we hated to go to Pearl Harbor so we never went there. So, I guess war is not a pleasant place.