<Begin Segment 9>

KG: For some reason, I was a shy thing. It took me a little while to open up. It doesn't take me much nowadays. I don't care what people think.

MH: What made you open up?

KG: I really don't know. It was just all of a sudden...

MH: Was it before you got married or after you got married?

KG: This was all after I got married because all through high school, heck, you had to take a crowbar to crow me open really. I didn't do too much chattering.

MH: You told me that your husband was from Japan. Did you speak Japanese in the home?

KG: We had to talk to my mother in Japanese, you know. But if we didn't want her to understand what we were talking about, we definitely, we could go into the English, you know. But the most interesting part was Mom could understand pretty much what we were chattering about. She says, she always says, "Yeah, okay, I know. You're talking about me or you don't want me to understand what you want me to hear what you want to say." So we learned not to speak too much in English while we were talking in front of her because sometimes she felt like she was being left out, I think. But other than that, we had quite a, it was an interesting family.

MH: What about your kids? If you didn't want them to hear or know what you were talking about with your husband, did you talk Japanese with your husband or --

KG: My husband tended to more, speak more Japanese. I could talk to him in English, but he would know what I was talking about. So there was no distinction that we had anything special that we didn't want the kids to hear. They wouldn't have understood, but they would have said, "Oh, here they go again."

MH: What did your husband do after the war?

KG: He used to work in a cleaning shop for some friends that he knew, and he was able to get, buy out of the Akagi family. They had established cleaning outfit in North Portland, and he heard about it because he was working for his friend. He had a cleaning shop, so he decided that's what he was going to do. So he took over the Akagi cleaning shop and that's where he spent his, until he retired. I guess he liked it.

MH: And did you help him at all?

KG: No. I worked at, I was working. See I did my own thing. He did his thing. I worked, like I say, I was with the treasury department. And I went on, and I got into the library, and I learn my whatever job. I thoroughly enjoyed it, you know.

MH: You said your husband had a cleaning place, right?

KG: Uh-huh.

MH: What do you mean by that? What did he clean?

KG: Clothes, cleaning shop, clothes and laundry. He took in laundry, but he did none of the laundry part. He had people come in and pick it up. The laundry part is washing, washing shirts and whatever. Then he had a woman there part time to mend the clothes that people would bring in and want it to mend.

MH: So then people came to the shop and brought the things that they needed cleaning?

KG: No. He didn't go after any of them. They all came to him. And the person that sold the cleaning part to him was hakujin. And he used to come down there and pick up the laundry part.

MH: The laundry part, they send out?

KG: Yeah. The laundry, the shirts, and things like that that came in.

MH: Did he do the pressing?

KG: He did the pressing for the other part, your suits and whatever. Yeah, he did that.

MH: But not for the laundry?

KG: He did the shirts, I think. But other than that, it was just bulk laundry.

MH: Where was it in North Portland?

KG: It was, I couldn't remember the address, but it's just about a block or so off of interstate on Russell Street, North Russell Street. That's where he made his living. He was his own boss, and he didn't have somebody telling him you got to do this. So that's it. That was his life. We were sort of very independent. Maybe that's why if I want to do something, he would always say, "Well, you go ahead and do it." He wasn't much for gallivanting around like I was.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.