<Begin Segment 10>

MH: It sounds like after you left camp, your connection to the Japanese community became wider than when you were growing up?

KG: Definitely, definitely. Like I say, when I, even after I grew... after I was married even, from one life of living in all Caucasian neighborhood and then going into the stand store business, all your people that came to you were all Caucasians. Here again, you didn't, like I say, my husband and, we weren't very socializing people, I guess, so we didn't know too many people. We knew who they were and what they did, that's about it. Outcasts, that's what we were.

MH: I don't think so. There was a Japanese church here in Milwaukie, were you active in that church?

KG: Sad to say, not really. My husband was really a very staunch church person, very, very much. My mother was too, but maybe it's because of the language barrier. I don't know. Like I say, growing up in an all Caucasian, your attitude is so much different.

MH: This church in Milwaukie, what was it called and what kind of church was it?

KG: It was a, wasn't it called Shinoi church? You know as much as I do. Why are you making me think like this? I think it was Shinoi, a Buddhist sect.

MH: And where in Milwaukie was that church?

KG: It's right in Milwaukie, what's the street name, huh? I don't know. What was it, forty?

MH: What was that building before it became a church?

KG: It was a Japanese church, I mean Japanese language school.

MH: That was the Milwaukie Japanese school.

KG: Yeah, yeah.

MH: Is it still in existence?

KG: It's still there, but I think it's, the original owners, I think they rent it out as a home. I don't know.

MH: I mean the building is still there?

KG: The building is still there. The church, no. Everything they had in the church went back to their mother church which is in Los Angeles. All of the church, I don't know what they call them, but they were all packed and sent back. Everything that was there was sent back because they didn't want to keep it there, and no one was there to take care of it. All of the people that were involved in that church were, had passed on or too elderly to take care. And then my husband, I think was one of the last remaining members. He just packed everything up and sent it back to the mother church in Los Angeles.

MH: And did you have a minister?

KG: Did we have what?

MH: A minister?

KG: Yes, uh-huh. You know, after, I think he broke away from, our first minister, he broke away from the church. He got married and he broke away. In the meantime, he had taken up dentistry. So he's a dentist right now in Portland. So we've had bachelors come in there.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.