<Begin Segment 14>

SG: What was, you said the first time you came back to the United States it was difficult to adjust to American life when you came back to Hawaii. How was it for you when you came to Portland?

AU: Yes. See that's another good thing that I got a job right away because in the beginning, well, although Henry had friends, they were new to me, and I didn't know them at all, and because, this was my first time in Portland, in the States. I mean, all the people here have been here for long time, and they know each other. They know about Portland, and they talk about, you know, oh, that person, that person, this person and that time. To me, that's nothing because I don't know them. I don't know how they were, you know, and it was kind of lonely. So right after we're married, I went to work, right, and so I just got in with the people at work and then really made friends with them, and it was like, it was getting into our family. And because at that time, immigration office was so small that it was like a family. And from the district director all the way down, everybody was treated like a family. And when I had my children, the district director would come and see the kid, you know, see the children, and we were invited to their homes, and they would come over and visit. And it was like everybody was like a family, and everybody worried about everybody and everybody's family. "How's your family?" was the first thing, "How's Henry, how's the kids?" you know. That's how it was with the office. So it was nice, and I just got into it, so I didn't feel like because I'm KibeiNisei, or whatever, that I feel a little different. I didn't feel that way because they just accepted me. They took me in right, like anybody else.

SG: Was there anything in terms of difficulty with American culture for you to adjust?

AU: No. I guess I must have been open. [Laughs] I just took into it, yes.

SG: Anything about leaving Japan that was difficult for you?

AU: Well, yes. It was because my family was all there, you know, when I came, and I was leaving everybody. Besides, my boss over there said, "Are you sure you want to go? You haven't seen this guy for ten years. How do you know?" he kept on saying that, but yeah. It was, when I got married, when I got married, because my mother cried before I left. She says, "I can't even come to your wedding." And so, you know, the only thing was that my father made me promise that I would go back there to visit him every five years, about every five years. Well, you know, before you know, you have your family, and priorities are changed. You think about your children and your family first, and then so I never got to go until it was kind of too late. When we went, the first time when we went to Japan was when my daughter was about ten and my son was about five years old, and Henry said, "Well, we better take the kids back to Japan to see the grandparents before it's too late," because his mother wasn't getting any younger. She was in her eighties, and my mother was, you know, wasn't getting any younger either. So we went back to Japan, and it was like somebody up there had told, "You better go." Because just as we got there, we got, you know, to Tokyo, we got word that his mother had taken a fall, and she was bedridden. And then when we got to Osaka that they told, they called us in Osaka, and they said, you know, she doesn't, she's losing her conscious or whatever. So we just hurried back to his hometown, his house, and she died. She passed away then. It was like she was waiting for us to come back, you know. And so it was a good thing. And then when we went down over to my mother's, then before we left, my aunt took me aside, said, "Have your mother visit, get her over there to visit you," and she said, "Don't wait too long because, you know, she's not getting any younger," and I said, "Yeah." So Henry had worked hard on it too.

And after our visit, after three years, we had her over here. We told her, "Your ticket is ready. We're sending it, getting your ticket. Don't need to have any money, just come, and then we'll take care of everything, so just get on the plane and come over." And that was her first plane ride. And so she said, "Well, you know, my first plane ride," and all the way from Fukuoka to, you know, to Seattle, she was coming in because we didn't have a direct flight then. So she says, well, she wanted to bring her granddaughter which is my niece, so fine. So she brought her, my niece together with her. And she's, then the district director says, "Tell her she can stay here for a while. And if she needs any time, extra time," he says, "we'll figure that out." And so, but, then he called SeaTac, the inspectors over there, and then he said that she was coming, and she was my mother. So when we went to Seattle to pick her up, and they said, "Oh, point out your mother for me," and I told them which, and he just took her to the side and, you know, worked on it, so she didn't have to wait in line to go through the inspectors. Then he took us down together to the customs, to clear the customs, and he told her, "This is..." and so the customs guy didn't even check anything, "Go." My mother says, "Oh, if I had known that that's how I was going to pass through the customs, I would have brought more things." [Laughs]

But she stayed here for about three months. And she, you know, she enjoyed, she enjoys life. My mother is a woman that had enjoyed her life, and I think she kind of passed it on to me because, and I feel I'm real optimistic about everything. And when something goes wrong, I think, "There must be a reason for this," you know. And she used to laugh a lot, and my, I remember when I was growing up, even when I was working in immigration when I first started there, and the district director, I think he could hear my laughing over us. And then he was not in the next room but about two rooms down the hall, and I guess he used to hear my laughing, you know. And so once in a while, he won't hear anything, and he would ask, "Is anything wrong with the Atami today? She's not laughing. I don't hear her laughing." And people used to say, "You know, when you laugh, you sound just like your mother." Well I guess, but she really, because even Henry says, "Your mother really enjoys living, and you take her anywhere." So we took her to Reno, and she enjoyed it over there. She has fun. I think that's the key, you know. You have to enjoy that and all the things. She was, she was very strong, very brave. I think braver than my father. And that's why she was able, what she told me when she first started the barber shop, she had no, she had no knowledge of hair cutting, nothing, nothing, and she went to visit this friend of hers who owned that barber shop when she first came from Japan, and they said, "Why don't you buy this barber?" She says, "I want to get rid of it," you know. She says, "I don't want to work anymore. Why don't you buy this?" And she says, "I've never cut people's hair." She says, "That's okay. I'll teach you." And she said, she taught her for one week. She was there learning how to cut, and then she bought that barber shop, and she operated that thing. And she said, you know, in the beginning, people used to come, the Americans used to come and the owners of the sugar plantation or whatever, they used to come, and then she, they'd tell her, cut here, this way, cut here, cut this way. They would cut, they'd say, "Mama-san, how come you're a barber, and you don't know how to do my hair?" But they came back to her every time, and they would tell her how to do it, and that's how she learned. And she said, "People was so good to me, everybody was so good to me," and you know, she got to where she was teaching people how to haircut. But I could never learn. I could never learn, but I tried on Henry one day when he asked me, and I did such a bad job that he had to have his cap on for a week or so. [Laughs]

But like I said, I've gone through a lot of things, but then I think I'm a survivor, you know. And I have a girlfriend, one of my classmates that's in Maryland. She married this fellow in Japan, and she's here, and her husband, she lost her husband several years ago, and she's alone now. But the other day, we were talking, and she also said, "You know, we're survivors. We survived through the atomic bomb. We survived through everything." So she says she's not afraid. She says, "I'm a survivor." I says, "Yeah, we survived it." And the best compliment to me is when my daughter said, "You know, Mom," she says, "you did it. If you can do it, I can do it too," you know, and I think it was such a compliment. So she feels like she's got a good, she told me she has a good example in front of her, so she can do it.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.