<Begin Segment 16>

TR: So when Tom came back from the war, the two of you were able to start a life together.

AN: Uh-huh.

TR: What did you do?

AN: He started farming. He didn't know whether he could do it or not because in Seattle, he didn't do any farming at all. But his family had a greenhouse, but he saw, Joy Atayi was one of the girls here that raised on a farm. She was about so high, and she was out there driving a tractor, just speeding along. He thought, "Well, if she can do it, maybe I can do it too." So he started to, he decided he would go ahead and start farming.

TR: And what did he raise?

AN: Potatoes and onions, mostly that. Mostly, it was potatoes and onions, I think so.

TR: And did you work on the farm too?

AN: Not a great deal. I taught piano, just a far cry from hauling potatoes. I do remember, though, driving the truck as they were taking out the beets, you know. Oh, dear, got stuck, backed up, and tried to back up, and you know, in the mud and wouldn't go and it wouldn't go. And here this tractor was pulling me out, trying to, oh, that was terrible trying to, then all of a sudden, the truck took hold, hit a dry spot apparently and pulled out, and I backed right into the tractor behind me. Oh, dear, these horrible things happen.

TR: Well, how many children did you and Tom have?

AN: Two, a boy and a girl.

TR: And what are their names and what are they doing now?

AN: Oh, David is looking, he's a photographer. He does that type of thing. And I see, he photographs a lot of the Oregon State Games and that type of thing. He's also in the national guards, so I don't know. I just hope he doesn't have to go. And then my daughter is, she's a musician. She's a piano performance major, and she's married and lives in, out of Nampa, Boise, Nampa, out in that direction. And her daughter, as I say, is a musician also, a cellist, and she is, this winter, this last winter, she was in Germany, studying over there because that's the cello capitol of the world. And so as I say, she's working on her doctorate now, so she doesn't know what to do whether to stay with the doctorate and do that or else go back to Germany again and study. You know, if you're going to teach, if you're going to teach in college, you should have your doctorate. It's better to have it, so she has nice, nice decisions to make.

TR: So you and Tom had the farm, and did you continue on the farm through your whole lives?

AN: Uh-huh, yeah.

TR: And tell me about Tom. What kind of man was he?

AN: What kind of man? Well, he's a pretty good guy. He passed away in 1990. That was the year of the cold. 1991, it was really, really cold that year. It was, I can remember, he was gone by that time, and I was, we had lived on my parents' old place. And I thought my goodness, I said, "What's the matter with this?" I told, David my son had come to visit at Christmastime. I said, how come this feels, this bedcovers feel kind of funny, feels odd, and no one paid any attention. Then we woke up in the morning, it was all wet. It was so cold. It was so cold at that time that the red covers had, well because of the hot, heating blanket, it had turned this frost to water and the lining was white, so it had turned red because it was so cold. It was terrible. Out in the country, you don't have that heating. And then the other bedroom, I had painted it lavender and had frost on it on the walls, and it was so pretty. Lavender frost on the, oh, it was so pretty.

TR: How did Tom pass away? What happened?

AN: He had cancer. He had, yeah. That seems to take a lot of people, doesn't it?

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.