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TI: And then, tell me about Bellingham, what did they find when they got to Bellingham?

MT: Pardon me?

TI: And so what happened when they got to Bellingham?

MT: Well of course, my, his sister was there and she was a waitress and my uncle was the, he cooked and what they had him do was all different kinds of odd jobs and so forth, and as more and more people come from his hometown to help, there were more people than work to do, so then he decided to go fishing. So he would take, go fishing out on Puget Sound and particularly around Lummi Island, with the reservation, Lummi Island. And he loved the island at the time; he said it was beautiful. And he then -- in fact, he named my sister Rumi, Japanese name, because he like Lummi Island, so anyway, he then took these catch fish, and I got a lot of stories. I really shouldn't keep this up. Funny stories, but he's got...

TI: No, go ahead. This is, this is...

MT: Well he's, one day he and his friend is fishing out there. It starts to rain, as it does up there, so he said, "Let's deflate ourselves, get right next to one of the islands as close as we can and be some trees growing over, so we'll go under there and wait 'til the rain ends and then go back out again." And suddenly, crack. Lightning struck. And then pow, into the boat something fell. The other man on the other side of the boat said, said, "Tanuki wa baketa." Tanuki is a badger, in Japanese fairytale he transforms from woman to animal, so forth, and this guy, young guy, course all his, all these ghost stories that he heard when he was young suddenly appeared and he thought this was tanuki had suddenly appeared there, and he jumped into the water and started swimming. And my father said he looked up and saw that what happened really was it was a raccoon, and it was sitting up on the branch and when the lightning struck it scared the poor raccoon and it fell into the boat. Well, man swam that way and the raccoon swam the other way. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story.

MT: So he had funny tales like that.

TI: And how did the, the people in Bellingham treat the Japanese?

MT: Well, they faced a lot of prejudice. They faced a lot of prejudice. But some people were very nice to them. When more and more people came to my father's, my uncle's restaurant to help them -- 'cause he was sponsoring them, my uncle was -- my father then got a job at a, at a lumber mill, all Japanese crew lumber mill. And they, when he went there they said, "Which job do you want?" He said, "Well, which one pays the best?" They said, "This one." Said, "I'll take that one." What it was is feeding the raw lumber as it came in into the saw. No guard, he just... and then he found out why that job was open. They were supposed to take all the rocks, after it fell, all the rocks out of the lumber and then they put it to the saw. Well, it happened sometimes they didn't take all the rocks out and the last one, it shattered the blade and killed a guy, so my father, better part of valor, he decided that he'll take another job. He ended up being a purser there, the steward, he's the one that buys, so he could handle the soroban, you know, abacus, and he could, he could handle math things and so forth, so had enough education that they had him get that job. Then there was a forest fire, burned it down, so they had no job.

So then he got a job, I know that he got a job as a piano refinisher. He's pretty handy with his hands and he would help, and my father was, was slightly deaf, so the guy wanted to teach him to be a tuner. But he didn't want to be a tuner, piano tuner, but he did many, many other things over there. He, once when they were working there, one of his friends became adept at roller skating. There was a roller skating rink there, and so my father, so he persuaded, there were about six of them, to go together to roller skating. So they went there and, of course, my father and the other guys knew nothing about roller skates, so they're struggling away, slipping and falling and stuff. Well, one American kid, teenager started having fun, would come around and kick their skates from under them. They'd fall, my father getting madder and madder, and so finally he said, "I'm gonna get this guy." So when he came by, he kicked off his one skate, grabbed him and koshinage, hip throw and hit him on the ground and a big fight broke out, big riot between the six Japanese guys and the, and the police came and had to break it up. When the police came they, the owner of the place said the, his friend that could skate, said, "You can come, but none of you guys can come." And he said, "I don't care. I don't want to come here again." [Laughs]

TI: So your father was a very proud man.

MT: Yeah, he was. He was. But afterwards, when he got, later when, as an adult and so forth, I never found that in him. He was very calm, very calm guy.

TI: Yeah, these, these stories about your father, how did you find out about this? I mean, they're such powerful, vivid stories. Where did they come from?

MT: Some I would ask, other times he, he loved to tell stories and, because he's, he became deaf, people wouldn't pay attention to him. He'd be talking to 'em, and so he would talk to me 'cause I would listen and I asked him questions, so he would tell me all these stories. Now, I don't think my younger brother and my father, my older brother or my sisters knew about all these things. They knew some of the incidences, but I don't think he knew, they knew all of it. It was only because I would ask the questions, like I would ask my mother a lot of questions.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.