<Begin Segment 4>

AI: Well, so then you were saying that your parents had originally planned that they were going to stay there permanently.

MN: Stay in Japan, and I guess my brother had come back much earlier than we did, and was staying with friends in Seattle, and then I think it was about ten months we were there, and we came back to the United States.

AI: Did you come back to the same house and the grocery store?

MN: No. No, no, 'cause even before we left for Japan, we were living in a different place.

AI: So then when you returned to the United States, then where did you live?

MN: I think it's Twentieth off of Main Street in a big house.

AI: And --

MN: Oh, that was before, before we went to Japan, and then when we came back, we had, they found another place, and that was on Seventeenth off of Jackson, right across from Congregational church now.

AI: The current Congregational church.

MN: Uh-huh. It wasn't there when we were growing up.

AI: What, what was around you at that time, up on Seventeenth and Jackson? What was near your house?

MN: Mostly residence, and there were quite a few Japanese families living around us. And I could remember Clara Mosher was the owner of the houses that we were renting, and so we used to go there in the summertime and play cards, 'cause she was home all the time. And there were some Chinese, and there was an Italian family we used to visit in the neighborhood. But other than that, most of 'em were Japanese.

AI: And so then you started going to school soon after that, after you came back?

MN: When we came back, I started at Washington grade school, and since I didn't know how to speak English, they put me in kindergarten, and I was the biggest kid in class. But soon after, they moved me on.

AI: How was that, starting school and being the biggest kid in kindergarten?

MN: Kind of felt stupid. [Laughs]

AI: And learning English, how was that?

MN: I guess it just came naturally.

AI: So you don't recall that being too difficult.

MN: Uh-uh.

AI: And what was your father doing at about that time, when you were starting school at Washington?

MN: He was in the import/export business in steel.

AI: And so when, as far as the steel business, that meant that he was exporting steel to Japan?

MN: Uh-huh.

AI: And then would he import other goods to the U.S.?

MN: I don't know what he imported, if anything, because, and he used to take many trips to Japan. And our Sunday outing was to go these empty, the lots where they had all those broken-up cars stacked up. You don't see that so much, but we used to see them on Airport Way. There were lots of those, and that was our Sunday outing.

AI: Tell about that. Why was that? Why would he go, be going out there?

MN: It was for his own interest. [Laughs] Not for our interest.

AI: So he was scouting out junk metal and...

MN: Uh-huh. He was. [Laughs]

AI: And he'd take you along with him.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.