<Begin Segment 17>

TI: How was it when you got back with the family? So who was left in Walnut Grove? So just your father, or...

MB: Who was left?

TI: Yeah, who was, when you came back to Walnut Grove, who was living there?

MB: Just my father.

TI: And what was he doing?

MB: Head of the Japanese Association, and I'm not sure if they paid him or what, but he sold the newspapers, the three or four newspapers, and then they had annual New Year's huge publication, which he charged more than the annual price of the newspaper, and so that must've brought him something, but his income was very limited. Oh, I know when the camp people returned when the government decided to compensate for their being in Amache or whatever, that, and then he helped them apply. He did all those kinds of little things, and so he took, he got a percentage of that and he was really rich then. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. So for you, how had Walnut Grove changed? So before the war to after the war, what was different about Walnut Grove?

MB: Maybe they were a little more sophisticated about things in the world. And more were going to college, very few before the war. Of course, they couldn't afford it, but because of the poor education they were given they probably had a difficult time entering anyway. But it got more sophisticated. They moved to Sacramento and worked on, not farm work, but with the government, and so their lives improved greatly.

TI: Now after you graduated from high school, what did you do?

MB: I went to Cal Uni. Yeah, I was there four years and I was in social work.

TI: So how was that for you now, 'cause you'd been to lots of different places? You were in New York, you were in Amache, Walnut Grove, so what was Berkeley like? When you went to Cal how did you like Berkeley?

MB: I liked it pretty well. It was, everything was more permanent. I wasn't moving here to there, and... well, again, first year I, not the whole year, but I stayed in the Buddhist dorm. They had dormitory above the church. And then the following year or the end of the year, near the end of the year I went to the co-op, which was, again, cheaper, and things were so cheap. I worked. I worked at the canneries, I worked at the packing houses, and nobody as young as I was, was working there. They were old ladies who were supporting their families. And I didn't know whether it's that they didn't have the ambition to go on, but they wouldn't work in many of those jobs that required your hands.

TI: So you did that kind of work and then you saved that money, and that helped pay for school and your expenses during school?

MB: Uh-huh. I didn't make much money, but nothing was expensive. Going to Cal was, well, because of the living situation that I lived in, it was very inexpensive.

TI: And so what, what did you major in at Cal, what subject?

MB: What?

TI: What was your major in?

MB: Social work.

TI: And why did you choose social work?

MB: I don't know. I just seemed to like that more than teaching or... I wasn't, I knew it wasn't gonna bring me much money, but somehow I prefer that. I wasn't mathematically inclined or in the sciences, engineering or whatever, so I was in social work.

BT: Well you, you mentioned that your father was always helping people, so I wondered if maybe as a social worker you thought you could help people.

MB: I don't know. He was also very, kind of a domineering person and telling 'em what they should do. [Laughs] And I'd tell him, "You don't have to be so rude."

BT: I wanted to ask about when you went back to Walnut Grove for high school, did you find that most of the people did not return?

MB: Without?

BT: Did not, did most of the people from Walnut Grove return or was the town pretty empty?

MB: No. They returned to their homes. I didn't know what their arrangement was while they were gone. Like I said, we, my father charged only thirteen dollars a month for the house. Of course, wasn't any kind of a big mansion, but I guess they understood, the people understood that we, we'd been released and we'd be coming back. I mean, people were not that law fighting as it is now, demanding that we be given thirty days' notice and, "You never gave us any, it's our right to stay here," etcetera.

BT: So most of the people that you knew in Walnut Grove before the war came back?

MB: I don't think it's most. Maybe two thirds or thereabouts, because many moved out East, New York, Chicago, the Midwest, and first they started out as housework or a whole family being able to move together and everybody working in the same household, gardening and inside the home, and so I would say maybe -- but I think that it encouraged more people to go to college.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.