Densho Digital Archive - Lury Sato Interview (denshovh-slury-01-0005)

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MH: When the war started, where were you? What were you doing?

LS: We had that grocery store. We were married, and let's see. Yoshio also helped at the store for a time. He couldn't find a job in his line. And let's see, the night of Pearl Harbor, Dad was arrested, taken to jail, and we tried very hard. We had a common friend, Dr. Thomas was a senator from Utah, and we wrote to him. And Senator Thomas and Mrs. Thomas were in mission in Tokyo at the time Mother was going to college, and so we, they're old friends, and we wrote whenever we had problems to write and to correspond with Edna and Albert Thomas and we tried. Eventually Dad did, got released after about six months from camp in Louisiana, and he was released and came to Minidoka. By that time, Yoshio and I had a fellowship to continue his education for his PhD degree, and we were released, went to Rochester, New York, where we met number of his Reed friends who were also doing research work.

MH: Okay. I'm going to go back a little bit. When the war started, you said your father was picked up by the FBI. How did you feel about all of this?

LS: It hurt Mother a lot, but I was just married one year, and I took things in stride. There was this house, we had to go to the assembly center. This house was conveniently located to ship builders, so we had our property manager who rented this house for ship builders, workers. We sold the store to a Greek person, Mr. Papas, and so he took over the store. The store was doing good business until that time, so they agreed to purchase it. And they, for renting this house, I got fifty dollars every month sent to me because Dad wasn't able to be up for it. I was able to, with that we managed.

MH: What assembly center did you go to?

LS: Livestock in North Portland, Northwest Livestock Building. It was hurriedly made out into the little compartments where we lived. We spent a summer there. It was quite hot.

MH: How did you feel about that experience?

LS: Well, it gave opportunity to Niseis to do what they were trained for. I was trained as a teacher, so I took over the summer school business. There were others who as administrator, they did very well, and the assembly center ran very smoothly, and I felt that there were many talented and well-educated people. So among other things, I think it was operated very well.

MH: Was that under the Portland Public School or was it just something that you started for the kids?

LS: No. There was an administrator, a Mr. Tolrich was in charge of recreation and education. And he was very sympathetic to all people, Japanese Americans, and I was asked to set up school for the summer. I knew one of the former teacher at Oregon Normal School who was then supervisor of, superintendent of Portland Public School, and she helped get us old textbooks and other materials, and we did all right.