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After Topaz
Did you ever talk to your family about how they feel about you being interned?
No, well after I went back they asked about it and I talked about what happened to us. I told them that all of our money was tied up and we couldn't make any money or anything. So we had a hard time after we got out of camp to get on our feet. It took us about on the average ten years; it took the Nisei to get on their feet. Whether they were able to buy a T.V. set, get refrigerators, buy a car, and get a house and things of that sort. To live a normal life it took the Nisei about ten years.That's just about what it about took us.
We came back to here, California, in 1955 until then we first went to New York. We were there until after camp till 1948, and then from no, 1945 and then from there we went to Chicago. In Chicago from 48 and we stayed there and that's when I got the union job and stuff. I got decent pay, but then the factory moved out, outside. See they were in the city when I got the job. Then they moved in the outskirts, so I had to commute. In those days they didn't have the freeways so I had to commute by car going through the city streets in Chicago. It took me about an hour, an hour and a half to get out there. Well so I started looking for a house because I said commuting is too rough because I come home at sometimes seven o'clock.
When it snowed I sometimes didn't come home until nine or nine-thirty because the roads get all slick with the snow and you can't drive fast. And the cars are stalled because they can't move and they just leave it there. So they’re driving in and out, in and out of these things. So it took me sometimes two hours, two hours and a half to get home.
Was there any reason why you didn't return to California immediately?
Well that was the reason because I couldn't get a house out there. Yeah, we went out I would look in the papers and I would find one in the papers and I would telephone them. They'd say "Sure come on out". I'd asked if it was available even. So I go out there and when I open the door you could see their mouth drop. And then they'd say "Oh we sold it already". You know that kind of stuff and you know darn well that's discrimination.
Did you feel more discrimination in California?
Well when we came back here it was the same thing. It was amazing. For about a year or a year and a half we went every weekend, we went out. My little daughter was what about; she must have been about six and a half then. We were going out there and when we came home she said, "It's not fair that they don't sell us a house". That's the way it was.
So after doing that for so long, my wife's sister came back and she said that I could get a job back here. There were job openings as a machinist. I could get housing too she thought. So we all bundled up and I came back here on our vacation. By that time Chiz's mother and father had come back and they had this hotel that their lawyer kept for them. So when they came back they took over the apartment. So he had income from that of course the money that was made before went to the lawyers, he didn't get that part. So he came home and because he got that income he was able to buy a house. He bought a house and put a down payment on it, and started paying for it.
When we came back I guess because of the father's situation Chizu's sister must have thought that it was okay that we could find houses. But when we came back and we looked around it was the same story as Chicago. The phone they say, "Okay come right over", you go over and they see you. They say "Sorry". One of them was honest enough and said, "I'm sorry but we're under", a what do they call it now anyway, "agreement that we won't sell to un-whites. So I don't want to get into trouble so I don't want to sell it".
That sort of thing happened. Of course eventually we found a place up Orchard hill over here, where see the workers who came here to build ships, you know ship workers. Well the war was over and they had to move out, so they moved out and there were openings there. So Nisei moved over and then some openings near by opened too. That's why we got in. A lot of places opened up so we got there and we were there for about two years. Then children were getting big and we had three bedrooms. The boys were separate but the girls had to sleep together. So we thought we would try to get separate rooms for the girls.
So we started looking for a house and Chiz's sister was in real estate so we asked her too look and she was looking around and couldn't find anything. We waited another year, we waited two years, and so I said forget it the children are going to grow up and leave the house pretty soon so we won't need a big house. So we just gave up on it when Chiz's sister came over and said she has a couple of houses that she thought that we might be interested in and wanted to go over and look at them. Chizu and I said " Okay" and we went over and we looked at houses. There was a house at the bottom of our street, right at the bottom, but that was what you called railroad houses. One room lined together, no room in the back so you come into one room and you can walk out in to the backyard.
So I said "Oh no, not this one". So we went up to the top where we are now. And we walked inside and opened the door and went inside, and Chizu walked by the window. "Oh I like this" she said, "It's got a nice view you know?” So we negotiated, and these couples were teachers both retired and they had bought another house up at (Whiskey Town). They were paying two mortgages so they wanted to get rid of this. They asked for a certain price and I said "Well it's kind of hard for us" I asked them to come down to a certain amount. The amount that we could get from there and put it down as a down payment. At first they said "No it's too hard" then they called back and said okay they will do it. That's how we got that and we got that at a bargain, we got that at thirty-three. Three hundred and thirty-five we paid and we got that house. Of course now it's more than ten times that.
That's how we got this house, of course this house we got it on the day, we moved in on the day that we were going on our trip to Japan. We had agreed on a trip before we even negotiated with these people. When they said okay we had to move everything, we dumped everything in these rooms. We left everything and went to Japan and came back. Then we had to rearrange everything, it was a mess. Anyways that's how we got this house. Since then of course we've changed a little, we put up paneling, and we painted things, put up windows over there, and downstairs we put in different things. So we made it into fairly a decent place. The children could play downstairs and we had three bedrooms.
Was California different after you came back?
Yeah, it was. Of course we weren't working when we were in California before the war. So we didn't know it too well. It seemed a lot better at least we knew that a lot of Nisei could get jobs. A lot of them came back and got jobs around here in different places. Like San Diego and San Jose, a lot of them went to San Jose, and got jobs there in San Francisco. So jobs opened up and it became easier for Nisei to come up here and buy houses. Of course they could afford decent places.
Did you ever return to your house that you had before internment?
No, very few returned to the old homes because they didn't own them. They couldn't own homes before the war; they usually leased them or rented it. So when they came back they didn't have it. There were maybe a couple of them who were able to buy it under their children's names because they were citizens. But there were very few.
Did you ever reconnect with any of the Nisei Young Democrats?
Well we scattered. I guess in a sense we kept in contact. One of the couples went to Washington DC, a couple went down to Los Angelos, a couple went down to Detroit, so they scattered. We really didn't get together anymore. It's just Christmas cards, that's about all we started. But there are a couple here, (Anne Howdan) she was married to a Nisei and divorced and came back and married (Ed Howdan). He was the secretary of the, one of the offices in California government. He was one of the secretaries, he married her. We were in contact with her but she moved, they were in San Francisco, she past away recently. We went to her funeral; Ed just sent us another card thanking us for going down there.
Let's see another one was (Kenny Morasa) he was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. I think he is retired now but at that time. So those are the couple of Nisei that are around here. Oh and another one over in East Oakland, (Taro Kytayama) he used to be editor of a paper. He past away, his wife is still here. She is a young democrat. There were a couple others here but they past away now. So there are a few around but, as I said we're all getting old, so you find fewer and fewer like I am getting so old now I hardly know anybody my age. There aren't anybody around.
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