as a motorcycle mechanic in virginia we couldnt even rent a room because of racial discrimination and later we realized that they had never seen asians before so with the help of the owner we got a basement room where when you look outside you could only see peoples feet walking by the life was in another word i felt like we were not treated as human beings and even on the streets i could tell that people were not kind and i was very scared of that unkindness i was not able to communicate in english and i felt looked down on and as i did not work i did not have much contact with people but when i went to a market i would be met by stares of people looking at me as a stranger my husbands income alone was not enough for us to get by i think he was paid 2 an hour and the husband the owner said that he couldnt give us a raise but that if we wished to go to la then he would let us go he had an older sister here so we came to la surviving in la my husband started working at a gas station pumping gas i started working at a sewing factory downtown when it came to work because ourhis english was limited there were no available opportunities but by then i did not have the luxury of dreaming on any longer all the dreams had dissipated getting by was the priority to establish a living getting by was the priority so we were not choosy over which job to work at that is how this anylaborsolelyformoney began we earned about 300400 combined from that we paid the rent the electricity bill and and i had not realized it then but life was like a war others came for studies but for us it was for survival and we had not brought much money with uswe worked at places like swap meet cleaning jobs at night so in the earlier days of our immigration we worked three jobs looking back it was a hard life there werent too many koreans back then the immigrants since there were few koreans if we saw any asians passing by on the street we would ask are you by any chance korean would you like to come over to my house for a meal even strangers were made familiar just by hearing that they were also korean and lead us to open homes the korean community was hard to find birth of a son after i gave birth to my son i was very happywhen eddie was first born i saw other korean women having babysitters and i didnt think it was appropriate to have others take care of my baby so for us my husband came home from the gas station around 3 oclock and then i would take the baby and go to work we even