<Begin Segment 4>

HH: If I understand correctly, then, when you came to Philadelphia, you came with a friend?

YO: Yes.

HH: And I saw, your contacts happened to be one person.

YO: Absolutely.

HH: What other resources did you have like money? How much did you have in your pocket when you hit the streets of Philadelphia?

YO: Oh. My arrival to Philadelphia was a big disaster. My friend arrived... by the way, being, I can tell the story now, being an alien at that time, I was born in Tokyo. I did not have my citizenship. The eastern coast was still closed, and not having my citizenship, I was not allowed to come to Philadelphia. The government... although the people that interviewed me at the camp knew I was going to Philadelphia, but they said, "I cannot give you a ticket, train ticket all the way to Philadelphia, but I can give it to you to Cleveland. From there, you can do whatever you want to do." So I was given a ticket to Cleveland. It just so happened that Max Franzen, who later came to Philadelphia, was managing the hostel in Cleveland. And he also told me he knew I was going to Philadelphia, but I did not tell him I was going to Philadelphia, and he's so thankful that I did not tell him, because then he may have advised me not to go. Anyway, I had a brother at Fort Snelling, told him that I was going to visit him and then perhaps settle in Chicago. Well, that was not really a true story. I left, and from Cleveland, I bought my own tickets and came to Philadelphia. So I arrived one day later, than my friend Fuji. When I arrived, a man by the name of Kikushima, who owned a restaurant and had offered to rent us an apartment on the third floor, came to pick us up. I don't know how they obtained him, but it may have been through American Friends Service Committee. At that time, the office of the War Relocation Authority was not opened, came after me, and I said, "Well, you know, I have other luggage that I must pick up." Actually, it was my world possession. And he said, "Well, we have plenty of time, let's pick it up tomorrow morning." And so therefore I said, "Fine." The next morning, I see black smoke. We were located at 1620 Spruce. Everything I had other than the two small suitcases that I brought with me, burned in that fire, Broad Street fire. And I went to the railroad company. The amount that they gave me, I had it insured for a hundred dollars. It was automatically -- by the way, it was automatically insured for a hundred. And by some unknown reason, I took out another two hundred dollars insurance when I boarded in Cleveland to come to Philadelphia. So I was given a total of three hundred dollars, which was quite an amount at that time, and I was able to replace my wardrobe. And although when I mentioned this to the American Friends Service Committee, they said that I should not have done that, that perhaps I could have done more. But I was grateful to have gotten three hundred dollars. That was my entrance into Philadelphia.

HH: Did you have any difficulty... or what kind of difficulty did you have locating a job in Philadelphia?

YO: There was no trouble at all. The Service Committee found a job for me almost immediately. I had wanted to work in the hospital as a medical secretary, and Women's Homeopathic Hospital on Twentieth and Susquehanna had an opening, wanted me almost immediately. So I went to work there the first week.

HH: Did you encounter any kind of racial or ethnic prejudice at that time?

YO: None at all. They were very surprised when I told them that I had come. And I called it at that time a "concentration camp." And when I told him what had happened to me, people could not believe that this was going on to people on the West Coast, in California. But absolutely no prejudice of any kind, they were glad to get me. And I felt wonderful.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.