Suzuki has the same thing. He looks as if he had low blood pressure, but he has this terrific blood pressure. And the doctor said there was nothing in the world that could be done for Sokan. It was completely a physical thing. It had nothing to do with diet or drinking or anything else. It was a physical condition. At any rate, he had this coronary thrombosis which affected his speech and his mind a little bit. And that was in August or end of August, I guess it was hot, I remember. And well, for about seven or eight months, he was a complete invalid. He couldn't talk. I mean, he couldn't give lectures or that sort of

[01:03]

thing. People came to see him, of course, and that, but it was not—he couldn't lecture. He didn't make any attempt to. Then came the spring of that year, and the next year, spring of 1944, and he was better the early spring. And he had—of course, at this time, he had made a very great friend of Mr. Pollock, the lawyer who managed to get him out of camp, and of the doctor that we had for him, who was a very, very well-known New York doctor. And Sokan was determined

[02:03]

to marry me. He said that he wouldn't live long, and that there was nobody else to lead the Institute to. And if he married me, I would have his name, and that would naturally put the Institute more or less in my hands. And that the studying that I had done and so forth, and wanted to—that he wanted me to continue over here, would be—I could do it better if I had his name. And I refused for a long time, because I didn't want to. I mean, I was completely devoted to him. But I didn't feel that a Roshi ought to get married, for one thing. And the second thing, his wife was still alive. The matter had been discussed

[03:09]

at some considerably earlier time, and he had—and the question had been brought up before the war even began, of his getting a Japanese divorce. I mean, you might just as well know this, because it's just the way it is, and there's nothing that can be done about it. And he said that he was not—he couldn't get a Japanese divorce, for the simple reason that Sokatsu had made—had arranged the wedding, and that it would be for him to—he would have to ask Sokatsu for permission to arrange the divorce. And that that would be such an insult, since he had made it, the marriage,

[04:15]

and that the conditions which Sokatsu would be sure to ask would be impossible to accomplish. He wrote his wife many times and asked her to divorce him, and she just laughed and refused, of course. I mean, she wrote back sarcastic letters and so forth. So there came this time when he was—that idea was given up for a long time. And then he was not getting well, and the doctor was very worried about him, and finally the doctor took me on the side, and he said, now look here. He said, if you want Mr. Sasaki to get well, you have got to marry him. You have got to be—the divorce can be arranged in this country

[05:21]

with Pollock and that. We've talked it all over, and he said you have got to marry him. He said it's the only thing that will keep him alive, because he is determined he's going to die, and the only thing that will bring him any kind of peace of mind is and possibly facilitate his recovery is for you to marry him. Well, how was I to marry him? He was still married. But Mr. Pollock had found out that under certain circumstances you can—I mean, under certain conditions in the state of Arkansas, a—by six weeks' evidence there and public advertisement in the newspapers, a notice of divorce, that a divorce can be obtained.

[06:29]

And so he corresponded with people down there, with his legal representatives down there, and so Karen could not travel alone. He was too sick, still too feeble, and so I had to face one of the most difficult things in my life. There was nobody to go down with him but me. And Mr. Pollock, who adores me and whom I adore, went with us, and so there would be no question about transportation over the state lines and that sort of thing. Everything was made as carefully as could be. And we thought first of going to Hot Springs so that he could have the baths, but the doctor,

[07:41]

when we took him to Hot Springs, decided that the Hot Springs baths were not the thing for him in his condition. Furthermore, we had to make arrangements for somebody, some reputable citizen, to be his sponsor because we were still at war. And if he moved from one place to the other, he—wherever he went or stayed, there had to be a sponsor arranged for him. So Mr. Pollock managed everything, and a man who was a minister of the Congregational Church became his sponsor in Little Rock. And I took an apartment in a hotel, kitchenette apartment, and then he had another room in another part of the hotel.

[08:42]

And that was where we stayed for the six weeks or whatever it was, maybe eight weeks, I've forgotten, that it was necessary to stay before—you know, of course, the lawyer took care of—we had to see him from time to time, take care of the papers and so forth. So finally—there's a lot more, but finally, the divorce was granted, and the lawyer had made—gotten the—got everything ready for the marriage. The wedding ring was purchased in Little Rock and so forth. And we had to go personally to apply for the license with the lawyer.

[09:45]

And it was discovered that the, what is it now, county in which Little Rock was situated would not permit the marriage of a white person to anyone other than a person of white blood. Southern miscegenation laws. Yeah. Well, we already had accommodations on the train. We were going back to Chicago. We had accommodations on the train, and we had expected that we would get married in the morning, the minister was all summoned up, and everything was all planned. What to do? We couldn't get the license. And it was a Saturday. Well, to make a long story short and an awful—and it was still war—the

[10:53]

lawyer found another county in which either the judge wouldn't pay any attention to that law or something. And we had to drive in a cab like mad out to this place in Arkansas which is—I'll never forget it. There was nothing there except a couple of old dilapidated country stores with a couple of old guys draped against the poles, you know, on a Saturday afternoon. A couple of old niggers sitting around, and we were taken to the house of the judge, and he was very sweet, very nice man, and he had his wife there, and they had a little bunch of flowers for me. And we had this—in the ceremony,

[12:03]

we had some tea or something like that. And then we jumped in the cab and got back, and we had a terrible time to get out the cab because the gasoline rationing was still in holding, and the lawyer didn't have—couldn't run his own car, so we couldn't have that. And they had to—and a taxi cab in the town couldn't go outside the town because of the—and this is quite a distance, I don't know, 20 miles or something like that out to this place. But by hook or by crook, by pulling this wire and pulling that wire and so forth, we did get a permit for the taxi to drive us out to this little crossroads. That's all it was, just a crossroads. And we did get legally married, and we did have the divorce diploma, and we did have the

[13:13]

marriage diploma, and we fell into the train, barely made the train. And this was what—this was in July, so you know what July in Arkansas was like, flying around that kind of weather, at heat. We fell into the train, and of course he was exhausted from all of this, the excitement and everything, and had a very restless night. In the morning, we were going up to Chicago because we were going to spend a few days with Eleanor. And in the morning—the train was due in Chicago about 10 or 11 o'clock, I don't know what—anyway, we got up in the morning, and we were going to go to breakfast. And we were standing in the—we had the train, and it was quite full of people, and we had to wait to get in line for breakfast,

[14:17]

and maybe we were—oh, we were—we had to—the chair car, or the—what do you call it? The observation car. There was a pool, and the observation car was next to the—well, the dining room was part of a club car business, and we had to—there was a corridor where we stood waiting to go into the dining room part, and then there was a kind of a club car place back here at the back. And he was standing in front of me in this line waiting to go into breakfast, and I was standing behind him, and the train was going along through this, what, middle Illinois country, and I was looking out the window like this, and I looked back to the line, and there wasn't anybody there. And what had happened was that he had collapsed. He was there on the floor.

[15:18]

Well, we—the people helped drag him to a seat, and we called the conductor, and he got—sent a telegram at the next station before Chicago. I had a doctor in Chicago, an old doctor friend that I knew, and I sent a telegram to him, told him to have an ambulance and wheelchair down at the station. And after a while, Mr. Sarkey came, too. He fainted a fair way, and that's the way we got to Chicago, lifting him off the train and into a wheelchair and into an ambulance. That's the way we went up to Eleanor's. And we went back to New York the same way, in the ambulance to the train, and the ambulance from the train to the house. And from that time on, he got

[16:27]

these terrific headaches, where his blood pressure would go up around 240, and he could hardly stand it. And then in about—he died on the 17th of May. So the 12th of May, he had this heavy thrombosis of the kidneys. That was 1945. Oh, 1945, and he died on the 17th of May. So I've had a few adventures of one kind or another, Gary. It hasn't been a completely smooth and peaceful life. It's a strange marriage.

[17:26]

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