Densho Digital Archive - George Iseri Interview (denshovh-igeorge

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AC: So how many children do you have now and where are they?

GI: I have three children. Fortunately, they're here. Eldest son and my youngest son manage our travel agency here, and co-manage our insurance agency and real estate business. And my daughter works for Hewlett-Packard about twenty years now in Boise, and so she's right here all the time. And I have all my grandchildren and great grandchildren are here except one who, she's a professional student. She finally got her PhD, and she's working for the Bureau of Land Management in a Washington, D.C. office. But she spent the whole summer here this year working for BLM, and she got married here in October, and she had the wedding here. And she told us, she said, well, she's got one year out of the way already, and it seems so fast. Her contract is for two years if she stays in Washington. And she says, "I think I can get assigned over here after the two years is up." But between then and now, she thinks she can have few months to be assigned on jobs over here in these offices in this area, so she'll be home for Christmas. It isn't as if she moved away yet and it looks like we might have her back. But unlike the other Nisei, most of them, the kids grow up here, leave, go to college, and we never see them again. Maybe their families do, but there's many, many of these kids, we never see again. It's such a shame. However, we're getting a lot of them that now that moving into here from other places whose family maybe Los Angeles, someplace else working in Boise. HP got several of them. So by the way, my son Mike started at HP, after he graduated Oregon State in Corvallis, and I gave him an opportunity to come back here. I gave him a figure. "Mike, look them over, see how we're doing, and let me tell you what the possibilities are, and you can see what it's done for us and you decide." Well, he came home, and he said, "Dad, I don't see how I can beat that," and so he came home here to stay. I'm going to let the phone ring.

So anyway, by the way, my son Mike, I got to tell you this story. For kids who failed to go to college maybe or are having a rough time going through college, he came home and worked in our business when he could. He went to TVCC during the time he was here. And when he got through college, he graduated, in eighteen months, he graduated Oregon State University. When he got home, I says, Mike, I said, "How much cash and investments have you got right now?" after he graduated from college. He says, "Well about ten thousand dollars." He went through college without any financial help and had ten thousand dollars in the bank when he got through college. And if he could do that, there must be a lot of other kids that if they set their mind to it... admittedly, I paid him good wages but not fabulous wages, but he earned it all, and he worked like hell when he was at home, you know. And I keep telling my grandkids that, that they can get their college education too. And I think my grandkids, my daughter got a GI Bill, government loan, and she was older, so I paid that off for her. And our son Jan, I helped him a little bit. He didn't quite make the graduation, but he worked for most of his money. But it's just a message for the young kids. Tuition is up so high now, I can see it's not as easy as it used to be. But where there's a will, there's a way, and there's no shame in borrowing money from the government to do that as long as you don't expect it to be a gift. Pay it back and go on your way. But I've seen as far as kids are concerned, we're going to see a big change. Yesterday at the, this is a little different story. But yesterday at the, when I got through showing the kids through the museum, and this young lady, blond gal, she says, "I'm part Japanese." She's proud of it, you know. That's great, patted her on the back. "Well, my grandma, I think she was born in Hawaii. My grandma is Japanese." Great. There were days when if you're part Japanese, back when we were kids or our children days, this is a little tough on them. But now, proud of it, you're part Japanese.