Oral history interview with Chiyo Endo, 1992 February 28-March 2

This oral history interview with Chiyo Endo was conducted by Nadyne Yoneko Dozono at Endo's home in Milwaukie, Oregon, in two sessions, on February 28, 1992, and March 2, 1992. The interview was recorded as part of the Japanese American Oral History Project, which was conducted by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library to preserve the stories of Japanese Americans in Oregon. The interview was conducted in Japanese; the description of the content of the interview provided here is based on an incomplete English translation and transcript by Shiori Miyazaki, a student at the Pacific International Academy, in 2018. The translation and transcript have not been verified for accuracy.The recording of session two is briefly interrupted by a snippet of an interview in Japanese with an unidentified woman.

According to the transcript, in the first interview session, Endo discusses her family background and early life in Fukushima, Japan. She talks about immigrating to the United States after her parents established themselves as farmers in Gladstone, Oregon. She speaks about her marriage to Kanichi Endo, and about life on a farm in Milwaukie, Oregon. She discusses her children, their lives, their education, and their careers. She shares her experiences after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, talks about what her siblings experienced during the war, and discusses the death of her husband, Kanichi Endo, a few months before the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government.

In the second interview session, Endo further discusses her marriage to Kanichi Endo. She talks about raising her children, about running a greenhouse business, and about the Japanese American community in Milwaukie. She briefly shares her experiences while incarcerated at the Minidoka camp in Idaho during World War II. She closes the interview with a discussion about how she rebuilt her greenhouse business following her return to Oregon after the end of the war.