<Begin Segment 10>

MR: I have a couple of questions also about when you went to the Buddhist school or actually it was a Buddhist boarding house. Did your parents explain to you why they sent you there?

AS: Yes, to study Japanese and the culture, and also, so that I'd be able to talk to them. Otherwise, if I went to public school from home, I would start speaking English, and they wouldn't understand what I was saying. They was afraid that I might do that.

MR: So they sent your sisters, two of them to Japan --

AS: Yes.

MR: -- and you to this school. What about the rest of your brothers and sisters?

AS: Yes. My younger brother Masa, Mary, Susie, and the young, two youngest did not go because the war started, and they I think eventually went to business school on their own.

MR: At Mills, what did you study?

AS: Yes. I wanted to become a teacher so I studied education, and also I liked home economics. I like to cook. I made bread for the first time and also used, what do you call that, made a curtain. You know, you make the material, what do you call that?

MR: Weaving.

AS: Weaving.

MR: When the war broke out, were any of your brothers, well, your one brother or your sisters, were any of them in Japan at the time?

AS: No, no. My two older sisters were, came back when I was still in the Buddhist temple dormitory, so that's why they came.

MR: Mills is a very expensive college.

AS: Yes.

MR: And so your parents had three daughters at least who went there. How was that possible?

AS: Yes. My father sacrificed a lot. He, I noticed he never bought any suit for himself. And my mother, she grew everything in the garden, all kinds of vegetables, and we had fruit tree, all kinds of fruit tree in the backyard. And only meat I ever remember eating is the stew and wienies. [Laughs] I think that's the only meat Mother bought for us.

MR: Through your story, I hear just lots of hints that education is very important to your parents.

AS: Yes.

MR: What were their aspirations and hopes for you?

AS: Well, I think, I wished that he had sent my brother to college instead of us girls, but he needed my brother to help on the farm. He was the only man, and all girls are just no good for him, you know. We couldn't help him at all and maybe to keep us out of mischief, I don't know. You know, you could get into mischief.

MR: So you didn't help on the farm at home as a young girl?

AS: Well, we tried to, like when they had asparagus, my mother would say, "Let's go help a little bit." So we'd go in the warehouse, and the men will be packing the asparagus in crates, so we help do that a little bit, not too much. We weren't much of a help, but we did what we were able to. And then what else did we do? Gee, not very much.

MR: So, since farming turned out to be your life and you did a lot of work on your own farm, what do you think he would have thought of that?

AS: My father?

MR: Yeah.

AS: Oh, well, he like all the Japanese first generation would think I guess it's up to the husband whatever he wants to do, and the women is supposed to help him, so I did my best to help him. I didn't do anything for myself. I didn't even go to church. The church members say, "Alice, come over on Sunday at least, and we'll come after you." My husband says, "We have to work." So I stayed and helped him every Sunday. Every day of the week, I worked.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2005 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.