Densho Digital Repository - Yoneko Watanabe Okamoto Interview

Densho Digital Repository
JACL Philadelphia Oral History Collection
Title: Yoneko Watanabe Okamoto Interview
Narrator: Yoneko Watanabe Okamoto
Interviewer: Herbert J. Horikawa
Location: Medford, New Jersey
Date: August 27, 1994
Densho ID: ddr-phljacl-1-7-3

<Begin Segment 3>

HH: All told, how many months were you in both camps?

YO: Both camps? I would say a year and three months. I was among the earliest in Heart Mountain to leave and come to Philadelphia.

HH: Why would you pick Philadelphia as a place to move to?

YO: Actually, I had a friend by the name of Fuji Fujikawa, her maiden name was Fukasawa. She passed away about three years ago. She had already obtained a job as an artist in a silkscreen business here in Philadelphia, and she was anxious to leave, but her mother would not let her leave by herself. She was a very dear friend of mine who lived across the street, and came to the hospital where I was working as a medical secretary, asking me to go with her. I did not want to leave. I knew no one in Philadelphia, and neither did she. It just so happened that a strike took place at the hospital. I lost my job, and the very next day I went over to my dear friend and said, "I'm ready to go to Philadelphia." [Laughs] And this was in August of 1943, and there were still very few people leaving. I was screened by the FBI, told them my background, and they said, "You have a medical background, they are crying for workers to work in the hospitals in Philadelphia." It was quite a large medical center or a medical city. And they promised that I would have no trouble finding a job here, and we left together.

HH: If you could speculate for a moment what your life would have been like had the war not come. What would your life have been like if you remained in California as opposed to what it became by moving to Philadelphia?

YO: I had talked to a Japanese dentist at that particular time, and I can't even remember his name. He thought perhaps he would be able to use me. There was a woman who was working for him who was planning to leave her job, and therefore he thought, well, I will give you a call when she leaves. And with that, I continued to work in my family business with the hopes of working as a kind of an assistant and medical secretary to a dentist. And perhaps I would have continued to do that.