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TI: I'm gonna go and jump after the war, because in a previous interview we talked about Amache, coming back to the L.A. area, and where I want to pick up is your military service. And so let's establish, so right before you join the military, what were you doing prior to your military service?

MT: I was working. I was working at Grand Central Market. It's a market where inexpensive produce is sold. When I was going to high school a friend of mine's uncle had a stall in Grand Central Market and they were looking for people to work on Saturdays, so he recruited myself to work over there and so I started working there. And my brother, my younger brother had gone too, but he, they wanted somebody stronger, that could lift crates and stuff like that. And so, because ice carrots weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds or so, and so they have, we have to stack those things. My brother was a tenth grader and so they wanted, and when they found they had more than enough work out of us they just kept myself and the nephew. He wasn't strong enough either, but they kept him. [Laughs]

TI: So you're working at the Grand Central Market, so why did you decide to go into the military?

MT: Oh no, I was working there and then I worked near a year and made enough money to save, to go to UCLA. I was accepted at UCLA, so I went to UCLA. Went to UCLA a year and a half, and I quit and then went and started working again, back at Grand Central Market. At first I didn't work there. I wanted to get into another market instead of Grand Central, but I couldn't get a job, times were a little tough then. This is 1950, and so, '49, '50, and so I went back to Grand Central Market. Worked at a different stall and, Iwasaki's stall, and I worked there, and then the Korean War started.

TI: Okay, yeah, I want to just go back to UCLA just for a second, so you were working, went to UCLA, dropped out, then went back to work. We talked a lot about, in the first interview, that you did well in school.

MT: No, not when I... I had a problem when I went to, when I went to... high school was a breeze, and all you had to do in those days to get into the UC system, have a B-plus in your average, in your, and not have bad grades also, and I didn't have a problem getting into UCLA. I got in. But I didn't have to study. Mostly I didn't study, but, just do enough homework and get by. So when I went to work, now I, my friends that I developed after that time were guys that went to work after high school, and so going to see girls, go to dances, go see girls, doing things like that, so now I'm in their rhythm and I'm doing that, having a good time. Now it's time to, now it's time to back to school, go to school, so I go back to school. Well, I not only have a hard time studying because I'm not used to studying, but on top of that my friends still come by and say, let's go out, let's go out, let's go out. And I say, I can't go, I got to study. "No, no, no. Do it later. You can do it later. You'll do alright." So I'm weak so I go, go out. I come home and I start studying. Three o'clock in the morning I'm still studying, right? So by the time I get to school I'm really sleepy and, 'cause I didn't have a car, I had to take the bus to school or hitchhike or see if somebody would give me a ride, so I had to wake up fairly early in the morning and go to school. I'd get to school and I wasn't getting much sleep. School, I made all kinds of excuses why I wasn't doing so good at school. I was not a good student anymore.

TI: Okay, so school was not a, college was not a priority for you at that time.

MT: Yeah.

TI: So you leave UCLA then go back to work.

MT: So I said maybe I'm too dumb. I rationalized that I'm probably too dumb to go to school, so then I decide to -- but I wasn't studying either, but I rationalized that -- so then I, then I leave and eventually go back at Grand Central Market working and, 'cause I was an experienced young guy, so my salary was low so they hired me. But I did get, but I ended up being a journeyman anyway, but I worked there and in, course, in June 25, 1950, the Korean War starts. And I hadn't been in the service so I thought, well, this is it. I'm gonna go. And I was the first of my friends, all my friends to be called, and they had a party for, basically for all of us going in the service, or will end up in service. And everybody I knew except a few that were 4-F and one guy that I knew that had gone to work for the aerospace industry as an engineer, he was exempt and, poor guy, all his life he regretted, felt guilty not going to the war because all his friends did. He died early, but...

TI: Even though he was serving in a sense of forwarding the aerospace industry.

MT: Yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.