<Begin Segment 5>

MH: What happened when you, when they said you had to leave camp? Did you come back to where --

KG: When they were, you know, they were trying to get all of us relocated. You had a choice. You could come back to either where you used to live, and our living quarters were here in the western states. But a lot of people that had intentions of leaving, they all went to different parts of the eastern part of the country too. So my husband came back to look over the situation, and at that time I think they had, I think it was called the War Relocation or something like that, I can't remember, but he came back and they had an office here in Portland. They had already set up a place because they figured a lot of them would want to come back to this, wherever they lived before. And they had jobs that if they wanted to work in that kind of thing, I really can't remember the name of it, but he signed up for the job there and he came back. And then my mother didn't want to come back right then. She says she'll just take care of Ronnie when he was a baby. He was two, three years old, and then my husband brought back Jean. And I had her for a while. But then we both had to work in some way, and Mom wasn't quite ready to come back. So we kind of farmed her off to the Watanabes' back and forth for a short while. So Jean was their child for a while then our child at other times.

MH: You said your husband came back. Did he leave the camp to come to Portland to find a job, and then he came back after you?

KG: No. He came back, see, what they did is they asked if, they had what they call the War Relocation program or something. But anyway, they had work relief. I think it was called work relief, and so he worked in that. They had an office here in Portland. And so he signed up to go to work there, and he came back and looked at the situation. He came back, and then I think he came back by himself because I think I came back again by myself because... oh I know. He brought Jeannie back and then I followed. We, at that time, the Tsubois had a home, and I don't know where the Tsubois were, but we got into that home and it was a huge home, and we kind of acted like a stepping stone for other people. They came back and they stayed there. I think one of the families was the Ninomiyas, and the other one was the Yano family. It was a huge home so we could take care of them all. They could do their own cooking, so that was no problem.

MH: Did you come back by train?

KG: It was train. It was a train.

MH: Came back on the train. So when you came back and you said, you know, having childcare was very difficult, so you had the Watanabes going to take care of Jean. Did you find a job also?

KG: Did I what?

MH: Did you find a job also?

KG: Well, I can't remember the first job, but it was with the federal government. It was the treasury department, and they had steno type work. We had to type out checks for the people in that camps, so I had to do that. I was able to do that. If I could have moved along with them, I would have followed them up because the woman that was our boss for some reason, she took to me and really, she used some of the, she wasn't talking to me, but she was talking about those people over there, and they were the bad --

MH: What you do you mean by "those people"?

KG: She always referred to them as not Japanese, you know.

MH: But J-A-P?

KG: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. She always did that. I don't know for some reason, and I don't know. I just let it wash over my head. She referred to that many times that I guess she was expecting me to do some kind of, you know, be react, but I did not. I could care less. I figured, well, if that's the way they want to talk, that was their business. So in fact, I think outside of that which she wasn't referring to me, I don't think, and I didn't feel any of that when I went out into the general public. I only had one instant where we were walking by. I was by myself, and I don't even know who the person was, whether it was a man or a woman and said something about that four-letter-word again and said, "You don't belong here, why don't you go back," or something like that. I didn't hear it all, but that's, I'm just presuming that's what they said because I heard that word. That was all. In my life, I think many of them have said that they've always got that other 4 letter word, and it was very unpleasant but, and then when I did get into a job, I was placed in the part time again. This time doing typing in one of their departments. Then I got called into the main office one day. And I thought oh, but she was real nice lady, and she wanted to know if I enjoyed working, you know. I said, "Yes." I have to work anyway. She says, "Well, we have an opening here that we've been unable to fill for quite some time." She says, "Would you be willing to learn something that's different?" And I said, "Well, I'm always game to learn anything that will help me get into the working field." And she says, "Well, we have a printing department that's been open for quite a while." She says, "We'll have someone teach you." And she says, "If you want to think you would like to do something like that, we'll have this person come in and teach you what to do." I had to think a little bit because being a printer, heavens to Betsy, what was I going to do? She told me, she took me up there, and she says we have this and we have this. And in those days, when I first went in, it was, they had where you had to set your own type and run a little press. And they had a little, I guess if we look at it now it was just an old mimeograph type machine that I had to run. Well, it looked interesting enough. I was always game for something new anyway. So we got in there. From where I was doing my typing, she had this woman come in and told me what I was to do and how I was to do it. For some reason, I enjoyed that typesetting part. It was fun. Each little tiny type, you set up your material whatever it was, and it didn't take me long to learn that. And the other, it was already prepared for the departments that I had to do it for. So all I had to learn was how to operate the machine. After a week or so, it just sort of fell into place. That was that. That's where I got started in the printing department.

MH: I'm going to go back a little bit. You said you worked for the government first, and then where did you go to?

KG: I went to the library. They sent me to the library after that because the government, they were being sent, they were closing up the offices here in Portland. And they wanted me, she wanted me to go to Salt Lake City with them, but there was no way I could go and follow, keep on my typing work or whatever, all that steno staff work as years went on. But if I was free, I certainly would have because it would have been something. But I'm not sorry that I couldn't go because I got into this here printing job that I thoroughly enjoyed because after that initial thing, we got into larger presses. So it just kind of grew, and it was something that I enjoyed. It was really something I enjoyed.

MH: So how long did you work at the Multnomah County library?

KG: I was there, I was there doing their printing for let's see, well, I'll just say roughly thirty-one years, thirty-one, thirty-two years, yeah.

MH: Okay. I'm going to go back to where you went to live at the Tsubois' home. How did it feel to live in a house different than when you lived in camp?

KG: Living camp life? I don't know. I just fell into it. It just, I thought this was the thing. We stayed there. We lived at that home there of the Tsubois' residence there for a while, and then the War Relocation Housing Authority kind of helped you too, you know. They kind of looked around. And heck, we didn't have any money in those days, but still they would, their question was would you like to buy or would you be more interested in renting? Well, it didn't really matter. I thought if we could get something that we liked, we might as well think about making it a permanent home. So we -- actually the War Relocation housing area people kind of checked over the neighborhood and see if there would be any animosity for anybody coming in that were of a different culture. They come back and told us that there was, nobody seemed to mind who they were just as long as we were good neighbors. So that's, I think that was really the first house we looked at that we said okay. It's close into town, and we lived there for... my, twenty, almost thirty years there.

MH: When did your mom and Ronnie come back from camp?

KG: They came back while we were still at this here first step, Mr. Tsubois' home. They came back there. That's when all, you know, the Ninomiyas' and, as they came back, they had to have some place to go, and we had this huge home. That's what we did. We sort of helped each other out. We lived as a big group there for a while.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.