Densho Digital Archive - Mika Hiuga Interview (denshovh-hmika-01-0017)

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AC: So your husband came, was discharged. He came back to Hood River?

MH: Came back here.

AC: Oh, to Ontario, and you continued to --

MH: Then we got married in Hood River, then I lived, come to live here.

AC: That's when you took the job --

MH: He worked on the farm and he farmed some, and I worked at Oreida.

AC: So you told me a little bit about the troubles that you've experienced when you came back from Hood River, to Hood River.

MH: To Hood River.

AC: The gasoline, the brick through the window. Anything else happened to you when you were there?

MH: Well, it's funny. My neighbor was a German descent lady, and she'd take this dollar, and she'd go to these different stores. She's quite a lady. "This dollar good here?" Of course, the store would say yes. She would just, kind of mocking them because if it was my dollar, maybe they wouldn't honor it, I don't know. But we were lucky. We had a Safeway store where we would get our groceries. That was one place where we could go. We knew that if we go to Safeway, we can get groceries. We didn't try any other grocery store.

AC: So how was it when you moved from Hood River to here, to Ontario?

MH: When I had to leave my home? Oh, happy times because I got married, and I could still go visit, we visit, while the folks were living, we went to Hood River a lot. You know, when our children was born, we'd take them and show them. We went back and forth a lot, and I still go. Our families are kind of unique I would say. The children are, some of them had decided we have a get together, and for three times a year, we get together if you want to go. They have a golf tournament, a bowling tournament, and a camp out. And I don't golf, so I don't go to the golf, but I had just gone a couple weeks ago to the bowling tournament. It was in Portland. It's kind of a reunion, and I could see the kids growing up, and so we're very lucky. We do that three times a year if you want to go. We have a camp out at Lost Lake in Mount Hood in the summertime. It's nice, yeah.

AC: So when you moved out here to Ontario and Japanese American out here, how were you treated?

MH: Okay. We were, I came later, but some of the ones that came earlier like maybe George Iseri and some of these people did meet some discrimination. My husband, he came from out of camp. I wasn't married to him. He came out of camp to work in Homedale in Fruitland, and the people who used him like topping beets or picking peas or whatever, treated him good. Okay. Saturday night was a treat night, and they'd take him to town like in Ontario or Payette, and they met some discrimination. But the farmers were welcoming them because they needed help, and then they could make extra money. In camp, you don't have that much, so they could buy a few things that they could take back.