<Begin Segment 14>

AI: So in the third and fourth year of chugakko, you would have been about fifteen or sixteen years old?

RM: Uh-huh. Yeah.

AI: And I was wondering, at that time, you're getting a lot of training and you're... that's the time of life when a lot of kids are thinking about what are they going to do next in life, continue in school, go into the military, get a job --

RM: No, it's too young to go in the military yet when you graduate.

AI: But they're --

RM: Of course, the wartime they did it, they conscript the one even before graduation, but at that time... see, they don't conscript until you're twenty-one.

AI: Right.

RM: Then they, just like a draft, they draft you.

AI: But you were saying that as you were getting your military training in chugakko, you would have been qualified to continue on with that if --

RM: Yeah, if I stayed there, yeah.

AI: If you stayed. Well, so did you think in your mind that you might be staying in Japan and you might be continuing on in school there in Japan, or when you were about age fourteen or so, were you --

RM: Well, I never thought beyond that, 'cause I was too busy supporting myself. What happened was, see, we had lot of brother and sisters and I have to support, so I delivered newspapers when I was going to high school.

AI: Oh, excuse me, was this in Japan?

RM: In Japan, yeah.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.