Densho Digital Archive - Lury Sato Interview (denshovh-slury-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

MH: After your husband worked at Washington, D.C., did he work somewhere else after that?

LS: Yoshio? No. He died of cancer in 1972. I think it's due to the chemicals he used during, they weren't as precautious about chemicals at those times. I think it's much better now. Both my sons are in chemistry or in chemistry and in medical research, and they do some of the things now.

MH: What are the things that happened after your husband passed away? Did you keep working?

LS: I took a holiday. This is incidental, like every winter we used to go to New Hampshire to ski over the Christmas holidays, so I said, well we ought to do, continue like we did, and we headed out to the ski resorts. And the last, they insisted I didn't ski enough. So my son took me, and the first thing I did was broke my leg. And since then, they don't ask me to go skiing anymore. Well it happened that in Vermont there was a very new hospital that started up. And in the cafeteria, there was a Japanese woman married to American was working in the hospital and learned about a Japanese Nisei in the hospital. And so she took boys to her, I think they had a mobile home or something, gave them, fed them sukiyaki dinner, and the boys had to buy me a skirt because they slit my clothes. Well, they bought me a very nice home woven skirt which I still wear. And the next day, I was able to get out and drive back from Vermont to Maryland. And I said, before I go, I want to stop and get a wheelchair, and so before we got back to the house, we got a wheelchair, and so I was able to manage. The doctor said, "No, get rid of the wheelchair or you'll be invalid all your life." Well, I managed, it was, oh, I couldn't, we had number of steps. I stayed in the lower level and was bedroomed there in the family room. And at the same time, a Chinese woman from China is looking for a place, room, and so I had her come, and she stayed in the house, did all the work for me. I stayed downstairs in the wheelchair, and she even paid me for a room. She was a good cook and took care of me until I was able to get around.

MH: So you continued to teach.

LS: No. Not when I had broken my leg. I could I suppose, but I didn't. By then, it was a private school not public school that I went to. And I figured, I better not because that, well, I felt I didn't need to teach. So --

MH: What important thing did you do that you told me about, something very important?

LS: Oh, yes. After Yoshio passed away, I started a memorial for my husband, and I started only with $10,000, and I thought it would pay for maybe ten years at most. This is because I had many Americans whom I thought they need to see Japan and the way they operated. It's a fellowship, I pay transportation to the winner for that year to go to Japan to attend the meeting, Japanese, Japan Chemical Society meeting, a pharmaceutical society, and I arranged for the concern in Washington to manage that money, and we select anyone who is able to go, would like to go to Japan and the papers are, there are three candidates. And among them, the Japanese will pick one person, and he would be given transportation to Japan. And in Japan, the pharmaceutical society took care of their program and their affairs in Japan, and it was quite successful. It was hard work getting that done. And when I sold my house, there was so much tax on it, so I gave whole thing to add to the memorial for the memorial fund, and so it will go on for a number of years, I think.

MH: So it is still in existence right now?

LS: Yes. Oh, it's every other year. I felt that the Japanese ought to be credited too. So alternate year, a Japanese is given an honorarium to speak at the Nikkei.

MH: Now I understand that you went to Japan and got some kind of an honorary --

LS: Oh, yes. They had a 100th year anniversary of the society or maybe it was 200. It was in Kyoto, and I was invited to go there, and they gave me a certificate and a medal and all that which I tried to find, but I couldn't find it in time today.