<Begin Segment 8>

JC: I want to ask you, I want to go back a little bit now. The war is over here, and you've returned to Oregon. When did you first get in touch with your mother, and how was that, your mother in Japan and your family?

FO: I believe through the Red Cross we were able to get in touch and found that everyone was all right, and the home was in place. But the war stories that my mother tells is really hard to visualize. She even told us of the story of a, an American pilot who had washed ashore, and the local people had buried him. And here I remember my sister asking my mother, "Well, did you keep the, his, the tags and his things, so they could inform the authorities?" "No," she says, "everybody was too afraid." They didn't tell the, to try to tell the American authorities of what had happened.

JC: So what's it like to be a part of the country that has bombed your other country? Was that hard to reconcile feelings of being an American and still having family in Japan or what did that feel like?

FO: No. I don't think Japan has... Japan's a nice place to live, and it was nice while I was there, but my allegiance has always been America, and I never thought I would be living in Japan.

JC: And did your mother then stay in Japan, or what happened to her?

FO: No. Right after the war she returned, and she probably would have about the time that I and my sister and brother came, but she said that there was not enough funds to put together for the whole family to return. And since she had built the house there and such that she was going to stay with. But then her funds stopped too, so she went through a bad time. I understand she went, she was a cook at a factory and such during the war years, so she had it rough. The beginnings of life in Japan was very easy for her financially; but during the war, it was very hard for her.

JC: And she had three children living in the United States?

FO: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

JC: So you and John, your husband is a doctor?

FO: Engineer. He's a graduate of Caltech.

JC: And you started your own family?

FO: Uh-huh. John is self-made. He worked his way through college. He tells me he was a houseboy while attending California Institute of Technology. And being a houseboy, he learned some wonderful household chores. Being a houseboy, he's a wonderful ironer. He's very detailish when it comes to house cleaning which I'm not. I try to hurry through everything, but, no, he's very detailish. So he's learned some good, good points as a houseboy. But he graduated from Caltech in, also in 1941.

JC: And then do you have children?

FO: Yes, I have one lone son. And well, he was a, I shouldn't brag, but he's very precocious. Learning came so easy for him. Right when he was five years old, he appeared on the Uncle Bob Radio Show with an accordion piece, "On Top of Old Smokey," dressed as a little cowboy and took the top prize. He entered St. Helen's Hall and mainly from kindergarten because we had no kindergartens here. I don't know if the public schools, they, most of them didn't have kindergartens in those days unless they were private kindergartens. I can't say, but he started kindergarten at St. Helen's Hall, and he went through all through the eighth grade. I think he received wonderful training there.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.