<Begin Segment 15>

MN: So while you were living in the trailer parks, what did you do on the weekends?

JM: Oh, boy. I loved to spend my time at the Pike. This was an amusement park in Long Beach. And oh, they had so many things over there. It was, it was like a mini Disneyland at the time. They had the Cyclone, you know, it just...

MN: That a roller coaster?

JM: Roller coaster, they had penny arcades which took real pennies. Oh, you could spend an hour in there easy. And you really got your play out of pennies. I could, I could spend an hour there and not spend any more than a quarter. And then I would always go see a, they had triple-feature movies, you know, Dracula versus Frankenstein. They were these great B-movies. I love B-movies to this day. And Bela Lugosi is a favorite of mine. [Laughs] I could be a charter member of the Bela Lugosi fan club, the Eastside kids, even though they wanted to go beat up the "Japs." You know, Muggs McGinnis and the Cisco Kid and all these Westerns. You can't beat those. And when it came time to eat, they had... oh, they had the most wonderful hamburgers and hot dogs and shrimp boats. What's not to like? I was there every weekend, every weekend for years. I'd ride my bicycle. I even, I even wrote a poem to my bike. [Laughs] That was published. That was my first publication.

MN: Where was it published in?

JM: Yeah. "It carries me through wind and fog, a friend more faithful than a dog, my bike." [Laughs]

MN: And where did you get this published?

JM: They had an anthology of junior high school poetry. So they accepted mine.

MN: Now where were you getting this money to spend at the Pike?

JM: Oh, my sisters would come in on the Red Car. And a lot of people would take the Red Car to go to Long Beach, to go to Pike. And they would come and visit us, and they'd give me a... what do they call it? They'd give me two dollars to go. And that two dollars went a long way, believe me. Movies, penny arcade, whatever, food. I'd have money left, I'd have a dollar left, actually. Comic books. God, you get, they were ten cents apiece. And some of those were the originals, too, that are worth, you know, god knows what they're worth today. They're original Captain Marvel, first editions, something like that, which I just probably tossed 'cause they were only ten cents. Oh, boy.

MN: Now, you said -- now, did your sisters live with you at the time?

JM: No. They were, they were staying in Los Angeles, they were working at the Queen of (Angels) Hospital, nurse's aides. The grunge, they did the grunge work. They emptied out the bedpans, they made the beds, they did, they did the dirty work.

MN: What about your parents? Were they working?

JM: My father never, never found a job after that. So even there... I think a few times, we were even late on our rent at the trailer, trailer park.

MN: So was it basically your sisters were supporting your parents?

JM: Uh-huh, yeah.

MN: Your father just having a hard time finding another job?

JM: Yeah. Couldn't get a job. I think he was quite typical. Later on, of course, a lot of Isseis went into gardening. And to me, gardening is the backbone of our economy out here. If it wasn't for the, if it wasn't for the gardeners, we would have been a terrible case of starvation or poverty.

MN: Now, there's this Bible in your house.

JM: Oh, yeah, right.

MN: Tell me about the story.

JM: Well, of course, they sent me off to Bible school, and I recited the Twenty-third Psalm, and I got a Bible. So I was very proud of that.

MN: And this is in the trailer parks.

JM: Uh-huh. I went to the trailer park Baptist church.

MN: Why is this Bible so special?

JM: It's the first thing I ever got, you know. I mean, you kind of remember things you got when you were a kid. So hey, I got this big old book, and good quality printing and everything. So what not to like? Free. [Laughs]

MN: Did any of the sermons stick with you, or did you just think it's just another white institution, this church?

JM: Well, you know, one of the things, in any religion, when they get to you when you're young, you're very impressionable. So you do, you do internalize a lot of the teachings whatever, whatever it might be when you're young. So I'm sure I incorporate, or I calculate in my psyche some elements of Christianity.

MN: Now, how long were your family in the Long Beach trailer park?

JM: Two years, I believe.

MN: And then from there, where did you folks go?

JM: We returned to Los Angeles and lived in the Jefferson area. And I went to Foshay and I went to Dorsey High School.

MN: Now, you mentioned that, okay, you left Manzanar, you left the Long Beach trailer park, and there was this one thing that you got once you moved into Los Angeles, which was a luxury.

JM: Oh, yeah, yeah. Which was the flushing of the toilet. 'Cause I never heard that sound in Manzanar, and I never heard that sound while I was in the trailer park. And I went to visit, I stayed with my sisters during the weekend, and they had a little house in the back in the Echo Park area. And I heard the toilet flush. It was like, I can't describe the sound to you. It was like, "I'm back to civilization. I'm back among living people." I don't know. I guess it's different for everybody else, but for me, a toilet flushing was a sound of, it meant something to me. Maybe that's why in my condo I have three toilets. [Laughs] I didn't consciously... it just so happened that my condo has three toilets. That's the way they built it. So I'm very happy. I use all three of 'em, and I get very upset if my plumbing goes out. [Laughs]

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.