<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Okay, so when we started the interview you talked about being born in Fremont, and so I want to ask sort of your childhood memories of Fremont, because it's not, it's not where very many Japanese lived. I mean, most people lived kind of more in the Nihonmachi area, and Fremont is, it's kind of...

MO: Yeah, there weren't any Japanese in our area, and I was the only one in my school, at B.F. Day School and then I started Hamilton, and I don't think there were any other Japanese. Lived next door to the library and I just, I had one very good Swedish friend. She, her mother was Swedish. But yeah, I finished B.F. Day School and then I was gonna start Alexander Hamilton, seventh grade, when the war came along.

TI: Okay. Before we go to the war, I'm just, I just want to get a flavor what Fremont was like for a kid growing up.

MO: Well, I didn't know any different, being Japanese I guess, from other people, and being next door to the library. I do remember this: my parents didn't want me to go to the library very much, and I didn't really understand in those days, but after I was grown up and they says, well, there was a lot of haiseki -- that was discrimination -- which they shielded from me apparently because I didn't know I was any different from anybody else, being Japanese from my Swedish friend. But apparently my folks felt discrimination, and there were no other Japanese in our immediate area. It was right by the Fremont Bridge.

TI: Yeah, so in particular they said don't go to the library, so what --

MO: Unless you had schoolwork that you had to have done.

TI: Because they thought that if you were there, there might be some discrimination against you? Was that why?

MO: Yeah, I think they felt that they picked on us to say, maybe you were talking or noisy in the library when you really weren't, or bringing up a small matter maybe. I don't, I kind of think that was part of it.

TI: So tell me why your family lived in Fremont? What kind of work did they do in, why Fremont?

MO: My father had a dry cleaning business, and I'm not sure -- we were there from about 1922 or so, I guess, before, when my older brother was born -- I don't know why they took that area. The closest one I remember living to us was the other dry cleaners, Hank Fukano's, the Fukano's up by, closer to Woodland Park, but they were the only other ones I remember.

TI: Now, do you know why your father, how he got into the dry cleaning business, why he decided that?

MO: No. He worked for Furuya for a while, and I'm trying to think how he got into the cleaning business. [to RO] You remember anything about that?

TI: The reason I ask is that was kind of a business, a type of business that quite a few Japanese got into.

MO: There were a group. They had what they, a club for the dye works.

TI: Right, because when I, it's interesting, when I find people who live in kind of different neighborhoods oftentimes it's because they worked as dry cleaners, kind of doing laundry or dry cleaning, and I was just curious about how they all got started.

MO: Gee, I don't know how my father got really into that, but there were a group of friends. They had a club or whatever they, a group that they met.

TI: And do you know anything about the club in terms of how big it was or how frequently they met?

MO: No. All I knew, the closest people to us were Fukanos, and their oldest daughter, Mitsue, is a Fukui, they had a cleaners. Betty Otani's dad had a cleaner. Betty...

RO: Shigahara.

MO: Shigahara.

TI: Yeah, so there are various families that opted to dry clean.

MO: I didn't know very many. I guess I was too young to really know too much about...

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.