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TI: So let's go back now to your family story. So how did your father come to Terminal Island?

MT: Well, my uncle, when he came down he took all of his friends and relatives to Terminal Island. That's how my father came down and he started fishing with my uncle. And my father said that, that he, rough storm, he would get seasick and it was not, normally he loved fishing, absolutely loved fishing, but if it's a rough sea he would have some trouble. And he, his family was business, the wholesalers, so he wanted to do something differently, so he saved his money and he started a Pop and Mom grocery store in Wilmington, California, across the, the... Terminal Island had two ways to get on there. One was by a bridge, down at Wilmington side they had a drawbridge, one armed drawbridge, and, and across that. Right next to it was a Ford assembly plant and another one was a vegetable oil company there, smells like peanut oil. And then the other one was a ferry. Initially they had a passenger ferry and an auto ferry separately, and after a storm the, one of the boats, the pillars broke and stuff and so eventually they got a, from Seattle, got an old combination passenger, automobile ferry and brought it down there and that's what they started using. And this was probably around 1939, '40, somewhere around that time.

TI: So, but your father had a store right around there, is that --

MT: So he went over the drawbridge to Wilmington. He had, had stores up there, and he would fail and come back and he'd go fishing again, but he would go fishing on a skip jack, a -- no, no. What do you call it? They, Japanese call it kenken bouto, but it was a, there was a small two-man boat and he would, he would go fishing with Mr., a Mr. Shindo, was a very devout Christian guy and he would go out with him. And he was a neighbor, very nice man, very nice family. And I think the mother lived to a hundred and five or something like that, but anyway, he used to go fishing with him and both were kinda nonchalant about things. They said, he said they were both, the Japanese word is nonki, and they went out there and one time they were fishing, my father said he looked -- he's telling me this -- he looked, they had a big school of tuna, but one man tuna, so they... and suddenly he looked and they're almost floundering, they caught so many tunas, so he had to yell at his friend to stop, Mr. Shindo to stop, and they started throwing the tuna back into the water 'cause there were, they had caught too many fish.

TI: Wow. [Laughs]

MT: Well, anyway, he would do that and make some money, then he'd go back out and try another Pop and Mom grocery store and back and forth. And he had, and finally he ended up in San Pedro instead of Wilmington and my older brother and sister, they were kids, and today they would be called latchkey kids and my mother would take care of the kids in the morning and my father would make the lunch, everything else, and then the kids would stay home and she would go help at the market.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.