<Begin Segment 9>

AC: So you graduated from high school June of '45 and began Oregon Agricultural College in the fall of '45?

SS: Uh-huh. I was actually the first one in our family that Dad helped through school. My older sisters didn't get to go to college, my oldest sister went to sewing school, I think, and maybe language school in L.A., and stayed with a friend. My dad was having a hard time making a living, and so he sent the girls to go to work and try to get through schooling on their own. And my second sister, I think, went one year to University of Washington, but I don't think Dad could afford that. So she just kind of worked her way through school herself. My third sister, Teddy, worked herself through school, and I was the only one that really got to go to school and live in a dorm and do all those things.

AC: How did that make you feel?

SS: Well, I just probably was real selfish and didn't even think about it. But later I felt really bad because my brothers couldn't go to college, 'cause they had to stay home and farm with Dad after they got out of the service. Oh, I'd feel guilty when I goofed off, which I did. I would feel guilty, because Shingo and Jim had to stay home and work, send us gals to college. Dorothy and I got to go to college.

AC: Here it was during the war, you're a young woman, and the shortages, were you craving nylon stockings during the war without those?

SS: No, I was younger than that, I think.

AC: But just afterwards you just started college, and there were still, the war was just kind of recovering. Did you feel that you were needing any of these luxury items?

SS: No, that was before I was in college, I think. During the war, all those shortages of sugar and gas, nylons and whatever. But there wasn't my age, it's my older sisters probably remember.

AC: You're the first one from your family to actually get a full ride in college, but your other sisters worked their way through college.

SS: Uh-huh.

AC: Did they graduate?

SS: My third sister did. My second sister graduated from a design school, but it wasn't an academic type of college. But my third sister, she's really a scrapper. She's the one married to Dr. Tanaka. Mom said Dad was having the worst economic times when she was in high school. She went to Los Angeles and did housework, and then she enrolled at Los Angeles City College 'cause tuition was free if you were a resident, I guess. So after she established residency, she went there. And then she told Dad that she wanted to be a nurse, and he said, "That's fine, but I can't help you." So she applied for St. Mary's Hospital in Minnesota, probably he knows. It's part of the Mayo Clinic. And she got in, but she didn't have enough money to get there. So she got as far as Denver and then she did housework until she got enough money to get to... where was that? Rochester, Minnesota? And she got top grades there. And I don't know, she got honors and everything, but she had to really work to get there. I don't think I could... I was too spoiled to do that. Because, you know, Ted, by the time I went to college, he was paying for everything but my spending money. I had, I worked to get some spending money, but he paid my tuition and board and room. And they never got that, the older ones. So it was real tough for them. I marvel at it because I think, gee, I don't think I could have done that. We'd tell my sister-in-law what happened to Teddy and she said, "I don't believe that. Ask her." She did it. And then she got in the nurse's... what do you call that? Nurse's cadet corps. It wasn't the army, but it was a government sponsored program so she could finish her schooling, and she got to be a nurse through the nurse cadet corps. And she was in New York working and nursing at Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and doing real well. And then she thought, well, if she's going to be single, she's going to live in style, so she decided to get her master's I think, and she was working on her master's when she met Gus. He was a doctor, or learning to be a doctor when they met and married. It's been real good. But she had to really work all her life. I didn't have to work that hard. So I'm kind of privileged in our family.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.