<Begin Segment 26>

TI: So you talked about going to Buena (Park) and stopping work, and so what did you do after?

MN: To Buena Park, it was in Orange County. Well, maybe it was Orange County, or was it L.A. County? But I was just a housewife. I'm worthless as a farmer, I couldn't do anything, so I just stayed in the house and cooked and stayed with Shi's sister. And she was a gem, she and her mother, my mother-in-law, they were the ones that took care of me and showed me different things that I knew nothing of. And showed me how to cook and how to speak Japanese, 'cause I didn't know how to speak Japanese. I knew how to say kamaboko and that's about it. But I learned to speak Japanese a little bit from them, and then afterwards, later on, I learned to speak Japanese from my customers (when we operated our store).

TI: How about performing? Did you perform during this time?

MN: Here and there, but not too much. But somebody's wedding or something like that, or some kind of... they didn't have too many fundraisers in the early days, but later on, when they had fundraisers and stuff, they would call and ask if I would go and entertain.

TI: Well, that's what I wanted to ask. Because as a performer, so you had a sense of the events before the war, during the war at Manzanar, and I just wanted to get a sense of after. Right after the war, the type of events the community would hold. Like were there JACL installation dinners and things like that?

MN: There was more like, more like talent shows, I guess to bring up the people's spirits and things, they had talent shows quite often in L.A. And in Venice or whatever -- not too much in Venice, but in Santa Monica, West L.A., where they had a larger group of people who resettled, would have get-togethers and they would ask me to sing. But not too often after I got married, until a little later when they started doing things for Day of Remembrance and things like that, and when I was kind of old. [Laughs]

TI: Well, during this time, did you ever consider professionally...

MN: Prewar days, I had that kind of an aspiration. I wanted to become a radio singer. I wanted to be a singer so badly. But after camp, that was gone, 'cause I got married, and that thing just wasn't in my mind anymore. And then when I did perform at something one day, a young man came to ask me -- he was also a performer -- he asked if I would cut a record and sing songs with him. And I looked at my husband, he looked just like a kid, he says, "I wish you wouldn't." He was afraid that I would take on that professional life, and he would lose the (homelife)." So he said, "I wish you wouldn't." So I said, no, I didn't. So ever since then, my girlfriend would say, "Oh, that darn Shi. He cut your career short." [Laughs] But I don't have any regrets.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.