<Begin Segment 24>

AC: I'm gonna switch gears. How did you meet your wife?

JS: Well, she was an evacuee, and she was, she came out of Minidoka. Her family originally started out -- this is quite a story in itself, too long, but anyway, they started out in Tule Lake, her family did, and her family left Bellevue, Washington, in stages. Her oldest brother had to stay at home and farm because he had crops, and the government said, "You're gonna stay there and take care of crops until we tell you to move." That's the way it was. He couldn't leave until they said he could leave. So part of the family went to camp, meanwhile, Nellie and her sister and her brother, they voluntarily evacuated. They got jobs over in central Washington, working for a food processing outfit, and they worked in, picked asparagus and things like that for that summer. Now, for the family to move out of Tule Lake they had to all be together, so the ones up in Moses Lake went down into camp and joined the family, and then they left the camp and they kind of bummed around. They didn't do, her family didn't do well at all, in camp or out of camp. I mean, they had a group of families, and the oldest brother who was kind of, felt like he was responsible for the goings of the family -- his mother was a widow -- he kind of lost control, because here was a bunch of teenage girls and older, young adults, why, they didn't, I think, I'm sure that... in camp you hear these stories, about how families lost control, parents didn't, because they didn't go by parents' rules then, they went by camp rules. Anyway, my wife eventually, and her sister, older sister, came to Boise and worked in a women's store. And a friend of ours from Portland, she lived out Russellville, the Shiro family, she says, well, I was on my home from Fort Lewis and I stopped in to visit with her. She and I went to a movie or something. And she was engaged and she says, "I know this girl out there in Boise. Why don't you go look her up?" So I went to a dance. YWCA in Boise lent some of their facility for Nisei to be able to have a social time, so I went to this dance one night and I met her. That was about forty, did I meet her in forty, I might've met her in '45 or '46. I don't know. We got married in January of '47, so in January we'll be celebrating our 58th anniversary. And she, like one fellow, my friend down here from the South, he said, "I think you got the best of the litter." And I kind of think so too. I'm very fortunate. She, I asked her, "You wanna go down, be on there?" She doesn't, she doesn't like to talk on camera very much. Not that I do either, but she kind of chokes up and gets lost for words. But she's a wonderful woman.

AC: You had mentioned that the family had to be together to leave Tule Lake.

JS: Well, this is, this is what she tells me. They, I think they just wanted, they didn't want to pull out on a work permit, they just wanted to leave. And I don't know, there's no use for you to ask me anymore than that 'cause I can't tell you. I don't know what the ruling was, or... but they had to get together. And I don't, you got part of the family scattered here and maybe the Reclamation, War Relocation Authority maybe had some rules about these things. It just doesn't sound, make sense to me, but I'm not one to challenge what they were told, 'cause I'm not sure. But families left. Once they were in camp, once they, in camp and WRA had 'em all counted up, I guess, maybe they could leave individually. But somehow they had to, maybe they had to keep track of the people, that they'd forced evacuation from the...

AC: She went from Tule Lake to Minidoka?

JS: No, they went out to, they went to Nevada. Down around Carson City or somewhere. I think her brother, her older brother tried to farm, and when he got in the irrigated country of Mountain West, why, he was out of his element. Up there in Bellevue he had a little truck farm. The whole neighborhood there had truck farms, and they'd been living that way for years and years. They were still surviving that way. But anyway, they ended up, they ended back up there. The family moved, ended up in Ontario for a while. But I met my wife in Boise. Even in those days, why, our folks wanted us to be baishakunin wed. It was a custom. But our generation especially, after the war, broke all that up. It just, some still did, but only because the kids are willing. Some, and some young men have a tough time finding a bride. They didn't court well.

AC: So you got discharged. Did you move back here?

JS: Yes. I had this opportunity in, about in August or September a circular came down, second lieutenants... let's see, unattached... well anyway, I had an opportunity to go to Japan in the army of occupation. And with, maintaining my... see, our commissions were temporary, and I don't know just how this works, but if you're enlisted, you want to stay on, you could, I could've stayed on in army, go into army of occupation as a second lieutenant. But I can't, forget what the, there wasn't, and I don't know, after the war declared, war would be declared over or they didn't need me anymore, they could just say go home. But I could've also reverted to master sergeant with a permanent grade in the regular army. See, the army is made up of a regular army, United States Army, then Army of the U.S. Army of the U.S. consists of reservists. I didn't know this 'cause I, the only reason I know that is 'cause I was asked when I, I went before the board when I was taking my test for OCS and an officer asked me that. I thought I was pretty smart, but I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was then. They ask you dumb questions. They're not dumb questions, really, but they're questions that, they're kind of sneaky questions in a way, but how you answer them is, makes the one, it's what makes the impression. It isn't whether you know the answer or not; it's how you answer it. Those things I learned in the process.

AC: So what did they ask you?

JS: "You know what they grow in the Philippines? What's the main product of the Philippines?" All I hear, everything from the Philippines, was hemp. I don't know what else, I still don't know what else they grow in the Philippines. So I was wrong. It wasn't the main product. I forget what the main product was. It might be marijuana for all I know. But I remember I didn't have the right answer. I don't think I did. And the other thing was, "What branch of service you in?" I was absolutely wrong there, I guess. I told 'em United States Army. "No, you're, as a volunteer or a draftee, you're in the Army of the United States." Well, I'm still learning things in my old age. [Laughs]

AC: So when you came back here, what was your family doing when you came out of the army?

JS: They were row cropping. When we came to Ontario, ever since we came to Ontario, it hadn't been what we considered, consider truck gardening. We call it row cropping. We were growing, but we were row cropping in potatoes, onions, sugar beets. We grew some peas for canning, for a cannery over here, and corn, and then we grew, plant some grains as a rotation crop. We had, when we first came here we farmed with horses too, so we raised some alfalfa. When we were down in Carver, why, we always raised alfalfa or oat hay 'cause we always farmed with horses there. But we gradually, from 1937, we worked into tractor farming.

AC: And so when you, you came here and your wife was still in Boise? I mean your fiance, I guess, was still in Boise?

JS: When I came home from service?

AC: Right.

JS: That's where I met her.

AC: You came, after the service is when you came and you met her.

JS: Yes.

AC: Okay.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.