<Begin Segment 15>

MK: Did you come back to Portland before the war was over?

RM: Yes. We were leasing apartments and came back a little earlier.

MK: What year did you come back? When was that?

RM: I don't remember. Anyway, I remember the day the war was over. I heard about it in a store. It might have been a couple of years after we came back.

MK: Did you come back around the time the war was over? Around 1945?

RM: I don't know, but I remember I was at a store. Everyone in the entire store was so excited when we heard the war was over. I felt so relieved that it finally ended.

MK: You came back to Portland during the war.

RM: Yes, we did.

MK: Did people treat you badly when you came back because you're Japanese?

RM: No, no. When we left, all the tenants came to say goodbye to us and wished us good luck. They were all very nice to us. People were saying that it would be better for us to go to the camp as it could be dangerous for us to stay here. That's why we left.

MK: Were all of your children back when you returned to Portland?

RM: Yes, yes. All of them came back. Except for the eldest son. He was somewhere cold.

MK: Minneapolis.

RM: He was in Minneapolis, and our eldest daughter was in Salt Lake. We came back with the other younger children. The kids started to go to a public school right away. Everything was just as usual. My son was still small, but he was fixing his hair. I asked him why, and he told me that his friends at school all had brown hair. He said he was washing his black hair so it would turn brown someday. That was right after he started school. All the teachers were so nice and kind. Yes.

MK: You were mentioning that the children's hands were darker colored.

RM: There are some black children. We were not familiar with that, we had never seen them.

MK: I meant your children's hand being darker than others...

RM: I don't know about that. I don't think so. There were some black children in the class. They had not seen them before.

MK: There were not a lot of black people living in Portland.

RM: Probably not. They lived in a different district, didn't they? Small children didn't travel that far to play. They hadn't seen any.

MK: Did you live in the apartment after you came back to Portland?

RM: Yes, we lived in the same apartment.

MK: There were a lot of jobs then.

RM: Yes, yes. There were a plenty of jobs if you wanted to work. Labor shortage was everywhere. But no one was selling Japanese products yet. We went to Chinese stores for items like rice and soy sauce. Meat and vegetables were available in many places. There was a big market we went to, it's not there anymore. They were selling meat and vegetables. They didn't treat us any differently because we are Japanese. We came back, and that was it.

MK: Did your husband manage the apartments?

RM: Yes, that's what he did.

MK: Did he clean?

RM: Yes?

MK: Did he clean?

RM: Yes, he did. And I helped. I didn't go to anywhere else to work, but I cleaned and made beds there.

MK: And then, all your children finished school.

RM: Yes, they did.

MK: Who got married first?

RM: The eldest son Taro did.

MK: Did he marry someone from Nagano Prefecture?

RM: Who he married? From the nearby area, just next village.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.