<Begin Segment 14>

VO: Well, tell us how you met your husband.

EO: Oh, he had just come from Hawaii and entered Pacific University. So that spring break, he and his friend came up to Seattle just to look around. And his friend was a Methodist, and my husband is Buddhist, so said, "Oh, we're going to go to church tomorrow," because that was Saturday. So they flipped a coin, and guess who won? My husband won, so he came to our temple. But that Saturday evening, they went to check out the church, so he comes walking in. And I'm at the organ practicing for a wedding, I don't know if I was playing the wedding march or what, but he walks in. "Who's this smart guy?" I mean, he's real cocky, Hawaiian. So we just struck up a conversation. So I said, "Well, why don't you come to our service tomorrow?" So he came, and he kept coming. [Laughs] He'd hitchhike up to Seattle to come visit me.

VO: All the way from Oregon, he would hitchhike?

EO: Oh, yeah. From Forest Grove he'd coming hitchhiking. In those days, it wasn't that dangerous to hitchhike.

VO: No, but that still takes...

EO: You don't want to do it now. [Laughs]

VO: Still takes some devotion.

EO: Well, in the summertime he would come up and work in Seattle.

VO: So you met one... what year in college were you then? How old were you when you met?

EO: Probably eighteen or nineteen. I graduated in '52, so what would that make me?

VO: So you married right after you graduated?

EO: No, I was twenty-one already. I was of age, legal.

VO: And what was he studying?

EO: He was studying pre-optometry, but then he switched to education, and so he became a teacher, he switched. And then he got his first job in Sutherlin, Oregon, all white community. [Laughs] Redneck community. Well, anyway, the board chairman there didn't want us, uh-uh. He didn't want any Japanese. But the superintendent had worked in Ontario, Oregon, and so he knew Japanese. He was very sympathetic, kind to us, and he hired us. So we moved to this little town, logging town, near Roseburg, Sutherlin, Oregon, it's right on I-5. So we were there for a number of years.

VO: And both of you were teaching?

EO: Well, I taught off and on, because I had kids. So he taught at the high school, he taught biology and chemistry, and I was, once in a while I would substitute teach, and I think I got a part time job teaching art and home ec. or something, yeah, art and home ec.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.