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JG: So you graduate from PSR and someone who is, is as thoroughly Southern Californian as anyone I know, gets his first assignment in rural Sacramento. Tell me about that experience.

MN: [Laughs] Yeah, to show you and to really prove that my decision to become ordained was really not contrived and not preconceived or anything, but really was a process that finally culminated into me doing it, the proof in the pudding was that I was very naive about the whole appointment process in the United Methodist Church and I just assumed that I would come back to Southern California, but the way it was explained to me was that, "Mark, we need you here in Northern California and so we'll, you'll start off in Northern California and, and then after that as time goes on, we'll see what we can do, if you want to move elsewhere." So I just took it on faith that's what I would do, so... and now, the story inside of that, though, is really the critical piece. What had happened was there were three of us Sanseis who graduated from PSR in May of '85, 1985, and all three of us knew we were gonna be appointed to churches in Northern California. In fact, the other two, Reverend Roger Morimoto and Reverend Keith Inouye, were from Northern California. They had no problem with it. I really didn't have a problem with it either, but although my first, my natural inclination was to want to come back down to Southern California. But here's what had happened: we had graduated in May and no matter where we were gonna get assigned our appointments didn't start until July 1. I had decided to take a trip to Japan after graduation. I had never gone to Japan,I figured now's the time to do it, and so I made plans to travel to Japan. And so I left here for what turned out to be a ten-day trip to Japan, not knowing what, where my assignment was gonna be, other than that it would be somewhere in Northern California. When I got back I was informed that I would be assigned to a church in Sacramento, and I said okay, that's great. I didn't really know anything about Sacramento. I had been there actually back in junior high school, or maybe it was high school. I had been there through a YMCA Youth and Government program. But the only thing I knew about Sacramento was that you had to go through there to get to Reno. That's about all I knew, other than the fact that it was the state capitol. But what had happened was while I was in Japan, the cabinet, which is the group of superintendents that decide where you go, actually wanted me to go to our Japanese American church in Dinuba, which is in central California. However, since they couldn't contact me, because I was in Japan, they decided to place one of my classmates, Reverend Keith Inouye, there, and there were actually two churches that were gonna get new appointments in the Central Valley. One was in Dinuba, the other was our church in Fresno. And they decided to appoint Roger Morimoto to the church in Fresno and they decided to appoint me to the church in Sacramento, at least this is how I heard it came down. Now, why they would've needed to consult with me is beyond me, and I'm, all three of us are fresh out of seminary and it's not like we have any status on the totem pole, but when I came back I learned that I was gonna be going to Sacramento and I said fine and came back to L.A. for a couple weeks just to pack my things and headed up to Sacramento.

I vividly remember the day I arrived in Sacramento. The church there had arranged for me to live in an apartment downtown on Riverside Drive near Broadway, which was the downtown part of Sacramento, and my apartment was three blocks away from what is essentially the Japantown of Sacramento. It's actually Tenth Street. There is no geographic Japantown in Sacramento, but on this stretch of Tenth Street you had a manju shop, a Japanese run barbershop, a fish store, a grocery store, a Japanese restaurant, and to the extent that Sacramento had a Japantown, this was it. And so I vividly remember driving into Sacramento the day that I arrived in town there. It was, God forbid, a hundred and five degrees, and showed up at this apartment, which actually was inhabited by several other Nisei and Issei women, one actually right below me. And I had heard that there was this manju shop in Sacramento that was famous not so much for its manju but for its snow cones, and it happened to be this manju shop on Tenth Street. So I immediately headed over there and, lo and behold, since it was a hundred and five degrees that day, there was a line comin' out of this manju shop and, and you have to understand, this shop was very, very small. Really, I don't think the store front was more than a hundred square feet. Growin' up in my uncle's liquor store, I kind of had an idea of square footage sizes of stores. And so there I am, my first day in Sacramento, standing outside eating my snow cone, and I also had a map of Sacramento spread out over the hood of my car, just trying to get my bearings, and that was my introduction to Sacramento and how I actually got started there. And for the first three months I lived downtown there. It ended up being very good. I got to know my bearings around the city.

The Japanese American, there were two or three Japanese American ladies in the building who kind of took me in as their adopted son, I guess, and made sure that I was taken care of. Church members came by as well, and it happened to be in a part of Sacramento where a lot of the old time Niseis lived, and so they knew where I lived and came by. Eventually I moved out to a more suburban part of the community where a lot of the church members also lived and then continued on living there and serving the church there. So it was a fun time there, and it really was a very positive experience overall. I really... the other thing was, had I gone to one of those other churches, I would've been the solo pastor, but in Sacramento I actually was the associate, meaning I served under a senior minister, Reverend Gary Barbury, who was a Caucasian pastor who had served actually the Japanese American church in Fresno. So starting out serving as an associate was a very good thing for me. I got to learn the ropes, and Reverend Barbury was very good about pacing me in terms of my development and teaching me things about pastoring in the Japanese American church. So overall it was a very good situation to me. I, I laugh because I tell people, with all due respect to the people that, in Dinuba and Fresno, I must've been in Kyoto at a temple pitching incense at the time that the cabinet, the superintendents decided to send me to Sacramento. It had to have been more than just fate that, that guided that whole, that whole process there.

JG: Yeah, wow, Dinuba. I've never even heard of Dinuba.

MN: [Laughs] Right. I didn't either until I heard that I was almost gonna go there, and over the years, we have some church members here who are from the Central Valley and I joke with them about Dinuba and they say, "Yeah, Mark, I know what you mean. I grew up there." But just the way that all worked out, really, I hate to sound cliche about it, but it was God's hand that guided that whole process. It had to be more than just serendipity or fate or just a consequence. Something deeper than that.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.