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Description
A letter from Ayame Okine in Chicago, Illinois to her parents-in-law, Seiichi and Tomeyo Okine in Hawthorne, California. In the letter, she describes her new job, making women's leather purses. She packs merchandise into boxes for shipping, earning 65 cents per hour. At work, there are only 12 Japanese workers and other workers are all African Americans. She concludes that American people would be able to be nicer to the Japanese if not occupied by too many Japanese. She also writes about their Japanese friends that she unexpectedly reunites with in Chicago and updates of her husband, Makoto Okine, who is stationed in Japan and works as a truck driver for the U.S. Army. She also expresses her concerns about Hatsuno who is separated from her husband and left alone in California as well as her father-in-law's health condition. The arrival date of the letter, March 11, 1946, is recorded on the backside of the envelope. The Okine Collection contains materials collected by Seiichi and Tomeyo Okine who were Issei flower growers in Whittier, California. It includes correspondence, photographs, financial documents, and a photo album. A large portion of the collection consists of family correspondence with Seiichi and Tomeyo Okine, including letters from their Nisei children, Masao and Makoto Okine, both soldiers overseas during World War II, to their Issei parents incarcerated in the Rohwer incarceration camp in McGehee, Arkansas. The correspondence also includes letters from their relatives and friends who are former incarcerees in the camps during the war and have “resettled” in Chicago, Illinois as well as letters from the Okines’ family members in Hiroshima, Japan during the Allied occupation of Japan. In addition, the collection includes a family photo album compiled by Dorothy Ai Aoki, a Nisei daughter to the Okines.
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