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MN: But before we go there, hold on. Hold on, okay, Archie? Before we go there, I wanted to ask you, what is your birth name?

AM: My name is Atsufumi -- that's a Japanese name.

MN: How did you get the name Archie?

AM: Well, I was using Atsufumi when I was going to grammar school, but at, but at home all my friends just had a hard time calling me Atsufumi each time, so some, some of the Issei used to call me Atsushi for short, because that's just using the first character of my name, which means Atsushi. But Atsushi became Archie.

MN: Didn't your mother go play mahjong, also, and you kept pointing to the door?

AM: Yeah. Yeah, I told... my mother used to play a lot of mahjong because it was, it was pretty popular by the time, when I was small, and that was about 1934 or '5, around there. Well, it would get so late each, every night and I would point to the door and says, tell my mother, "Acchi, acchi." And then so from then, from then I guess some people started calling me "Acchi Acchi" and that's, that's where I got the name Archie. And of course, after the war I legalized it so I could use the name Archie as my English name.

MN: And acchi acchi means "over there, over there."

AM: Yeah. So I just pointed to the door telling my mother, "Acchi, acchi." Let's go home, you know. To the door, pointing to the door, "Acchi, acchi." [Laughs]

MN: And you didn't know this until after the war, that that's how people, why people calling Achicha. And how did you learn about the story behind Acchi?

AM: Well, my mother told me one time that I used to get so tired of waiting for her to play mahjong because that game goes on and on for a long time and I was getting so sleepy and tired. I wanted to go home and sleep, so I told my mother, "Mama, acchi, acchi," pointing to the door. So that's how people started calling me Acchi.

MN: And then is it after the war you met, is it Miyoshi Hoji's wife?

AM: Miyoshi Hoji.

MN: His wife. Is she the one that gave you this nickname, Acchi?

AM: Yeah, more or less yeah. Could be, yeah.

MN: And you said after the war you legally changed your name to Archie Atsufumi Miyatake.

AM: Yeah.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.