<Begin Segment 11>

JK: When you were able to leave camp, after the war and you were allowed to go home, how did you get back to Oregon?

SI: Well, let me tell you, everybody else was so anxious to leave, you could leave if you went eastward. If you went toward Chicago you could leave early but nobody could go back to the West Coast. But then after a while, they made it a little easier, so some people gradually started coming back. But we had nothing to come back to, because we didn't own our property. It was leased, you know. And so we came back to, we lived in government housing.

JK: And this was in the St. Johns area?

SI: Yes, uh-huh. And Leke Nakashimada lived in the same place. We were quite far away, he lived on that side of the street and we lived on this side. And my husband used to go over and visit with the old man.

JK: How did you restart? You came back to this area... because family was here? Some of your family went back east.

SI: No, no family. We had really nothing to come back to. But my husband and Leke were friends, or they became friends, and together they went around looking for jobs to cut grass or do housework. They did it together. And then one day he found out that Mr. Shoji, he passed away soon after, his mother-in-law had a pickup that she wasn't using. You know, old lady and husband gone, so she said, yeah, they could use her pickup. So they used that and went around and they, I remember he said they went around to pick up old batteries, and I forgot what else. But it was junk, anyway. So my daughter Janice laughs about it, she says, when it says, "What was your father's occupation?" she said he was a junk dealer. [Laughs]

JK: Together Leke and your husband found work to help support the families?

SI: Yes, uh-huh.

JK: And was it difficult for them to find, I mean, was the community where they were going around, were people receptive or welcoming them or did they face...

SI: They were on their own, on their own. And they'd buy a paper, my husband would buy a paper, and the first thing, he would look down here for jobs wanted or whatever, and the two of them would go around and try to find something. And then I don't know if Leke found a job first, but my husband happened to go out to Latosh Laundry, which was an industrial laundry. They take rags from a garage or something, greasy, and they take it to this Latosh Laundry and they'd wash 'em. And my husband happened to go there, and they were looking for a foreman. And my husband was fast on his feet, he could supervise, and he was, could be on the receiving end. And he was such a good worker, they just hired him right now. So he was the manager there for quite a while, but we didn't have a car, so he would have to... and we lived in the government housing. He had to get up real early in the morning and eat his breakfast and catch a bus to get to this bus stop, and then he'd have to change and get on another bus several stops to get to work.

JK: Wow, he really had to work hard to earn a living to support his own family.

SI: He did. And then he'd get home at about eleven o'clock at night.

JK: At night?

SI: Uh-huh. And none of us can work, you know.

JK: Right, 'cause you're raising two children then. Did the youngest one come?

SI: His two parents and me and the kids.

JK: And so he was acting as a foreman at this Latosh place. And then did that lead to other jobs?

SI: In the meantime he got sick because he had worked long hours, get home at eleven o'clock, and it's cold, caught a bad cold, and I know he was in bed for several days, and we were in government housing yet. And our living room was here, and there wasn't even a wall there, our bed was right there. But we had a TV or something set up there, and he was on the other side and trying to sleep, and he had a hard time recovering, he was really sick. And then as he got better, then Bob Ando, I don't know if you've heard of him.

JK: I know Ando.

SI: He said, "Hey, buddy, let's go out to Gresham and pick some berries." They were both real fast, so they went out to pick berries, and that paid pretty good. But then the berry season isn't that long. Then what did he do? There for a while, I can't recall what he did.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.