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SS: I finished my year there and then came home, and Walt had graduated from the university, and we got married and lived in Seattle, that was in 1949, and we lived in Seattle until 1962, and our two children were born in Seattle. I have a son who is fifty this year and lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, and I have a daughter who lives down in Orange, the City of Orange in Orange County, California. And I have two grandchildren who are blond and blue eyed and both graduate this year; our granddaughter graduates from the University of Washington, and a grandson, we hope, is going to finish up at Evergreen in Olympia. And then we have a little guy that's bringing up the tail-end who will be five in April, and he's my daughter's son down in California.

Let me see... so the first, I think until my daughter was in the second grade, I just stayed home. We moved out here to the Beaverton area, and the kids have all gone to Beaverton schools, both graduated from Sunset High School down the road here. But in 1968, I decided I would, I wanted to be a social worker, so I went back to school. I went to Portland State and got a Master's in Social Work and worked as a social worker for next twenty years. I worked at Good Samaritan Hospital; and for the last fourteen years of that period, I was director of social work at Good Sam.

I can't think of anything really exciting. I guess just some comments... I guess I've never really felt that I was an intimate member of a Japanese community; I guess because I didn't grow up among them. I have some Japanese friends, of course, but I guess I've always felt more comfortable among Caucasians because that's where my associations have always been. Since I retired, I've done a lot of volunteer work. I've been on the Governor's Commission for Senior Services until I resigned early last year because of my husband's health, and I've done a lot of work with AARP. I used to travel all over the country doing diversity training for AARP. I've worked, I've volunteered for Multnomah County Aging Services, Elders in Action, always been very much interested in trying to access minority elders into the services that they need, so that has been my main focus in my retirement years. Well, I think that just about rounds it up. Oh goodness me, it's almost 5 o'clock.

DF: Were you active in the JACL in Portland?

SS: Off and on. I wouldn't consider myself a really active participant. My husband was president, I think, in the early '80s, so I helped during that time. I've always been a member, but I can't say that I've been, you know, an active, real active participant.

DF: Have you talked with your children about life at camp?

SS: Some. They always come back with, "How come you went along with that?" you know. They just cannot understand why we, according to my son, "placidly went along," and I try to explain to him that he grew up in a different era. He got arrested once for being a Vietnam War protester, laid across the freeway up in Seattle or some such thing. So he just, it's hard for him to understand the environment of the time, and I said, you know, "We were not raised to be assertive, and we just didn't feel we had a choice." Well, he thinks that's all stupid. [Laughs] We haven't come to terms with that yet. And I can see his point, but we just were not raised that way.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.