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TI: And so when you returned to the United States, it's now been quite a while.

JM: Yeah.

TI: So how did the United States seem different to you?

JM: To me it was, everything was kind of strange, but my sister and my brother-in-law, "Hey, Jimmie," he says, "Since you come here you got to start working." And my brother-in-law was the chief cook at the restaurant, so he says, "I could pay you fifty cents an hour," says, "Could you come out and wash, do dishwashing?" So I said, "Yeah, that would be okay with me," and I started from there at this restaurant. And as I was working there, this Japanese fellow, he was a judo instructor, his name was Frank Nishimura and well-known at the camp. He used to teach Salt Lake City policemen and everything judo, and he was looking for a Japanese person that would help him do the gardening. So my brother-in-law says, "Hey, Mr. Nishimura, Frank wants to, is looking for somebody," says, "Do you want to work for him?" And my sister says, "Dishwashing, that's all you make," says, "Yeah, go work for him." And I started to work, help gardening with Frank."

TI: This is in Salt Lake City?

JM: Salt Lake City, yeah. And I stayed there and worked there until I figured that I want to come to California anyway and do something else different, but as I was doing gardening over there, since we came here I worked at the nursery for a while. It's a big Japanese, Bay City Flower Company Nursery, and then from there on, I worked there three years and then I went on my own as a gardening.

TI: And...

SF: I was gonna say, did you hang around with a lot of Nihonjins at that time, in the Salt Lake City area?

JM: Just when we got together, some kind of a thing goin' up, like if somebody passed away, all the Nihonjin, they'd get there together, or if it's some kind of a Japanese holiday you'd go to this Japanese store over there and gather and things like that. But they were, all the Nisei people, they were pretty quiet. They didn't want to speak out too much.

TI: Interesting.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.