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MN: Well, when you came back, you're struggling through First Street Grammar School, your father had his studio, and then your mother also helped at the studio. What did your mother do at the studio?

AM: She used to attend to the customers and she was very good at that, and then anything to make arrangement, my father, my mother was very good at that, because my father never did like to do that much of that type of work, so my mother was a great help to my father. So all the preparation and thing, my mother was very good at that, and so making, taking down appointments and things, and she was very, well, people liked her because she was so easy to approach. And then he would, she would make all the arrangement for picture appointments and things like that and my father didn't have to worry about anything like that, so that made things easier for him because all he had to do was concentrate on taking the picture of the people. And my father always got familiar with each customer and I guess he'd get the, he got to know the people so much that he knew just about the type of work that they will like so he would approach the kind of portrait that he would take for each customer according to the way he felt, so I think that's where it made a lot of difference of the type of work that he did because he was, he was very understanding of the people that he was taking the picture of. It wasn't just people coming in and then my father would take 'em, take them in front of the camera and pose them and take, take picture, but he got to know each person very well and studied them and while doing so he came up with all his idea what this person would like.

MN: Well, you, both of your parents are busy, so from your grammar school days you had to look after your younger brothers and your sister. How did you prepare their dinners?

AM: Well, my mother used to go to work every day and she would prepare things in the morning and leave some of it cooked halfway or something and then she would tell me how to finish cooking it and I would just follow her instruction. And then, course, cooking the rice, she taught me how to cook the rice from, from the time you wash it and then how you put it into a pan and how much water you put in there and thing like that, and how many minutes to cook, and she taught me how to make the rice, so that part she didn't have to worry about because I knew how to make the rice. She taught me how. So the other things I had to warm it up or things like that, but, well, my mother was a very good cook in that way where she got things prepared for me to just, it wasn't very difficult the way she did it because she was very clever at that.

MN: Now, there was also a Mrs. Hochi.

AM: Yes.

MN: Who was she?

AM: Well, she lived about three, four doors away from where we lived and she's the one that used to drive all the children to school and things like that on her car. And she was a great help because, see, where I lived, the same side of where she lived on Evergreen, and the side that we lived on we had to go way out to Stevenson Junior High, which is about two, three miles from where we lived, maybe more than that. And then Hollenbeck Junior High, which was much closer, but we had to go to Stevenson Junior High, so Mrs. Hochi used to take us to school and bring us back and then she would have dinner ready for us, so my brother and I would go to her house to eat dinner so my mother didn't have prepare anything for that day. So it was, she was just like our second mother almost 'cause she was so nice to us.

MN: Now, when you came back from Japan you were going to the Nichiren Buddhist Church Japanese class, is that correct?

AM: Yes, I started to go over there to learn, to take Japanese class. The reason that I went over there is because this man named Mr. Shimo used to teach Japanese school there. And he was a good friend of my father and also he had a son named Cedric Shimo and I was very good friends with him, so when I had to go to Japanese school I started going over there first.

MN: And was that Cedric Shimo's father or mother that taught at the Nichiren Church?

AM: Father and the mother.

MN: And did they also teach at Chuo Gakuen?

AM: No.

MN: No. But you transferred to Chuo Gakuen, is that right?

AM: Yes, I did.

MN: And why did you transfer to Chuo Gakuen?

AM: One thing, Chuo Gakuen is much closer to where I lived.

MN: Now, how was the Chuo Gakuen curriculum in comparison to education in Japan?

AM: Well, for me, Chuo Gakuen was much easier because I knew much more Japanese than the rest of the students and so I had no problem in that way. It was almost like reviewing for me almost because everything I learned in Japan they were still teaching over here.

MN: Now you lived in Boyle Heights, and then on weekends you went into Little Tokyo. I guess you went to Sunday school at Koyasan, is that, does that sound about right?

AM: Yes, I used to go Sunday school there. That's, that's, where Koyasan used to be on Central Avenue and then eventually when they built the new building on First Street I started going over there, too. So I think my parents were Koyasan members, so that's the reason why I went to Koyasan, too.

MN: And you had a lot of friends in Little Tokyo. What sort of games did you play in Little Tokyo?

AM: Let's see...

MN: Did you play on the trains at all, the freight trains that were around?

AM: Oh, yes. Back of where my uncle had his, I mean, where my grandfather started the confectionary store was a place where the train used to put their things and unload and load and things like that, so Alameda Street, used to be a train track on there, so always a train would be going north and south there, so we were very close to railroad train tracks and so we used to play on the train and things like that. That was one of the things that we had fun doing.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.