Densho Digital Archive - Amy Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tamy-01-0007)

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AT: I studied elementary education at Oregon State, had a roommate from Hawaii there, and it was very comfortable. I met Jim there after my first year. He called me and asked me for a date. I had no idea who he was, so I said of course not. I don't date on the weekday. I have to study. Of course, I always tell him I was holding out for dinner. He wanted a coffee date. I wanted dinner. So dinner was only on the weekends, so I held out for a weekend date. I made wonderful friends there. I did surprisingly well and graduated early because Jim had asked me, he had said after the first year that we had met that he was getting serious, so I was too. So I went home to Japan after my first year at Oregon State and told my dad I'm getting married. I don't have to go to school anymore. I can sell all my books, and so I did. I sold all my books, went back to Oregon State, and Jim says, oh, no. He says, "We're not getting married until after you finish school." I thought, what? Why would I finish school if I'm getting married, but I had to and I did. I spent, my husband Jim went off to dental school, and I stayed at Oregon State until I graduated, and then we were married.

We lived in... you want me to go on? We lived in Portland in a basement of a home. When we first moved up here to Portland, and the rent was $50 a month. It was so wonderful to have this huge basement apartment for $50 a month. However, with it came a big fat girl, a girl who was only, oh, six years old, but she weighed over 120 pounds, and she ate everything in sight. We had a box of chocolates that came from Hawaii, chocolate covered macadamia nuts. That girl came down, and every night we'd look at that box and we'd say now, Jim have you been eating candy, and he'd say no, have you? No. And we finally decided when it came down, we thought well, Shirley must have come down here to eat candy. And we finally decided well we'll see how far she'll go. So we left the candy, and every night we'd check it. Every night, there were at least two left, two gone, and we thought when it finally came down to the last three, surely she would not take anymore. She'd leave it, but she didn't. She took the whole thing. [Laughs] She ate the whole box of candy, bless her heart. But we lived there until Jim graduated from dental school, and I taught while he was going to school. I taught second grade at Ainsworth School and spent three years teaching. And as soon as he was through school, we had a child, Lisa, so I could quit teaching and settle down as a mother and a homemaker.

DF: What year did you and Jim get married?

AT: We were married in 1959 in Beaverton, Oregon. His mother and father were both gone at the time, so we just had his brothers who took care of us. Mom and Dad came from Japan to be at our wedding. Then when they left Japan, then they moved, came here, they moved to Hawaii to live and came here for our wedding then went back to Hawaii and made a home there in Honolulu.

DF: So you were still living in Portland when Lisa was born?

AT: Yes, oh, yes. We were still in, well actually, we moved to Beaverton then and lived in apartments there in Beaverton. And then before she was born, we bought a home in Beaverton on Baker Street. And when I think about it, it was about a 1200-square foot home, and it cost us $14,000 I think at the time. It was a great home to raise Lisa. It was a great area. We lived there until we decided we wanted to live in the country. So then we moved out to a little farmhouse off of Kaiser Road in Cedar Mill and had a horse and did a little, lots of gardening and lots of, we raised a lot of vegetables. We had a fruit orchard. But we had a well for water. That didn't do well. We decided we needed to move back into the city, so we'd get away from the well and moved here to Cedar Mill in 196, oh, golly, '3, I think, no. Must have been '63 because we lived here for thirty-two years or thirty-three years.

DF: Where was Jim's practice?

AT: Jim practiced in Beaverton. Jim was raised in, was born in Hillsboro but raised in Beaverton. So all of his friends and all of his family were living right here in Beaverton. So when he graduated, we decided we wanted to come back here. And he had a little office built on Farmington Road, and he practiced there until eight years ago. He's been, he retired eight years ago, so he practiced for over thirty-something years.