<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So there are two interesting stories that you shared with me, and I'm trying to figure out which one we should start first. There's one about your friend Sachiko when the war started, and then also a tenant, a renter at your place. In terms of chronological, which one do you think we should start with first?

MA: Well, I think the... I think the renter, I call that part of the story "the renter."

TI: Okay. And let me, let me provide some context, so you talked about earlier during, you had a large home and your mother would rent out some of the spare bedrooms.

MA: Okay, there was a three bedroom, I mean a three room apartment upstairs, which was rented to a young Japanese couple, a very -- at this period that I'm speaking of, which was probably 1939, 1940, I would assume about then -- and they were just really, really sweet. Sweet, sweet couple. And I don't know how this other fellow learned of a room. Maybe they suggested it, maybe he learned, I can't tell you. But then he rented a single room, and he was older and he told us he was, I'm not naming the business, but he was in a Seattle business for twenty-five years. His name was Mitsuro, and he was kind of quiet, but to me a little bit mysterious, a little bit strange, and in the sense that he always just, never smiled. He certainly talked. It wasn't like he wouldn't talk to us, but my parents couldn't understand him at all. And I could understand him and some of it was kind of perplexing to me because he would show me little booklets, maybe, or little pamphlets, and they would be kind of politically slanted, some of it in Japanese, which of course I didn't understand, some of it in English, which retrospectively I got a picture of what it was, but at the time, even then, I didn't understand it.

TI: So he was a, so Mitsuro was a Japanese national, Japanese immigrant, and he would communicate to you in, like, broken English?

MA: Yes.

TI: Okay.

MA: Not, I mean, understandable though. I could understand him. And he was always picking up foil scraps from cigarettes or gum or anything, any foil scraps, and he'd make these huge balls out of 'em, out of these scraps, and he even asked me if ever I found scraps, would I please pick them up and give it to him. And I never knew exactly why he was doing this. And his room, he always had a large light bulb burning, day or night, until his bedtime of course, and he'd be sometimes pounding and making what appeared to look like, like orange crates. And he was filling that, those crates with stuff all the time, and some of them were the balls, the foil balls, which was always kind of strange, but we never questioned him about anything and he didn't volunteer much. He did tell us that his one son was born, was graduated from the University of Washington, and one from the University of Oregon, and that at that time while he's talking to me they are in the Imperial, Japanese Imperial Navy. And then he also told me that his wife was visiting in Japan, and then he also, for some reason -- I don't know if we found those later -- there were five gallon cans of linseed oil. We might've found that at that later part of the story. And he would, there were a few comments sometimes that oriented towards, kind of directed towards a... his feeling was not that great for USA. That's, I can't remember words or exact quoting.

TI: But just a sense that you got.

MA: Yeah. Yeah, there was just something there all the time, but at the time I didn't place much importance in it.

TI: Yeah, go back to his sons. So one, a UW and University of Oregon grad, now in the Japanese Imperial Navy, was he pretty proud of the two, and when he, what did he say about them?

MA: Yeah. He, it was just kind of factual. I mean, he, just kind of an automatic situation. And yes, he had that sense of pride, which I could understand. If we had a son and they're in a wonderful navy and meticulously dressed and everything, I mean, he described them, yes, I think --

TI: Did you ever see photographs?

MA: Not until that later time when we found his stuff. yeah.

TI: Okay. So let's, yeah, I just wanted, we'll do it chronologically, I'm just curious, like the room, if he had photographs of the family.

MA: No, that I never saw. The only thing that was standing out was the fact that there was always this huge light bulb and then he was always putting things together.

TI: Okay, in these crates. And then do you know what he did with the crates?

MA: Well, at a later time, at that time, no, but then I kind of got a picture that he was sending it to Japan. But then I didn't know for sure. I mean, it was just kind of a speculation, really, on my part.

TI: Yeah, I think, just some background, I think during that time, because at that point Japan was at war with China, and I think a lot of people, there were, like, scrap metal drives or things like that that people would collect and then send to Japan.

MA: Send to Japan, yeah. Well, this is what I assumed, and more so later, as you'll, as that story goes on. And he was, when he talked about his wife he didn't say too much. He just, all he ever said was that she was visiting in Japan.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.