Densho Digital Archive - George Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tgeorge-01-0012)

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LT: Do you know how your mother spent her day?

GT: No, I don't. I wished I did, but I'm sure she must have met some other ladies that talked about their own things, but I'm not sure. But like I said before, Mom was ill when she went in there. I think from the time we went to camp, she did have the start of cancer, and it steadily got worse the longer we stayed there. I think we got to move out in 1943 to Boise, because they said they could give us better attention for medical problems. But they knew that it was a losing battle, so they just, they gave us discharge to go out into the city life of Boise.

LT: And your mother died in Boise in 1943?

GT: I think that's right, uh-huh, '43. I think it was late '43.

LT: After your mother died, you and your family stayed in Boise?

GT: Yeah, we did for a while. Not too long, because about that time, though, I know she was ill there for quite a while. When I say quite a while, probably maybe a few, several months there before she was slowly dying in Boise there. But by that time, though, my brother came back from the service, they were already released. They were discharged, so it must be toward the end of the war, too, so it must have been, she must have... I kept thinking the war ended about 1944 or so, I'm trying to put the two together. Because I do know after she died, my brothers came back, and we looked at each other, and we got to asking the question, "So now what do we do?" that's about the question. Nobody knows what the heck we were going to do, nobody had any money, very little of anything. And then we know we couldn't stay there Boise. They had a little house, there was a house that was rented a house to us from Reverend Johnson, who was a very nice person, very accommodating to us. But I do know that it must have been... when they were released, discharged, we come back to Beaverton area. Everything we had, we could, it wasn't much, but that's where we do. We came back to the Beaverton area, north of Beaverton.