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MN: Shortly after you returned you were in Los Angeles and you got some bit parts as extras in a movie. Can you share with us some of the experiences at some of the movies you had extra parts in?

RW: They were bit things, background things. They were like, how far down does it go, B, C, D, E, F, Z movies? Anyway, one was Willie and Joe Back at the Front. It was about these two GIs there in Japan, so we dressed as Japanese students in their black uniform, and we were in the background and you would walk by and then go to the other end and then a guy was standing there and turn you around, you go back. You go back and forth in the background. That was one of 'em. The one that was the most fun was called Destination Gobi, about the Gobi Desert, furnishing the Mongolians with rifles or something. Anyway, Charles Widmark and Don Taylor were in that movie and Shiro Kitabayashi and I were dressed as Japanese soldiers, and Widmark and Don Taylor were captured and we were told to kind of guard Widmark and push him towards the shack where they were gonna question him. In doing so, it was a night scene and the director turned to me and said, "Can you speak Japanese?" I said, well, a little bit. He said, "Well, tell Chuck to go in. Just tell him, hurry, hurry, get in." So okay, I knew, I could say, "Hayaku, hayaku." But then this Filipino guy says, "Hey, wait a minute, he's not in the guild. He can't say anything." And the director says, "Are you two in the guild?" And I said no. "Okay, well you do it then," he tells that Filipino guy. Well then he goes, "Ugga, ugga, ugga." Gee, I thought, oh god, what a farce. And then what was fun was we got eighty dollars each for getting wet. Widmark is supposed to have escaped, so we're inside this building and then we come running out into the rain, these big pipes of water showering water, and we climb in this truck, and we're slipping and sliding, laughing and bumping into each other. Of course, it's not on the film 'cause they're filming it a little ways away from the truck, but it was fun. The best part was we went to the commissary to eat, have lunch, and Shiro says, "Hey look, there's Marilyn Monroe." She was having lunch there. We were having more fun watching the waiter 'cause he kept looking at her and he almost bumped into everybody with the stuff he was carrying. That was the highlight of our career in the movies. [Laughs]

MN: Now, you eventually married a second time, in April 1953, to Shinobu Shirley Hamaguchi, and after you got married you went looking for an apartment, and how did these apartment managers treat you?

RW: Well, they didn't treat us very good, I mean, apartments and homes. First we tried, after we got married, to try to rent an apartment and looked in the paper and then got the address, went to this one apartment in L.A. area, Wilshire area, it wasn't a fancy place. And the lady came out at the top of the stairs at the doorway and then I asked her, "You have a note here you have an apartment for rent?" And she just flat out said, "I'm sorry, I can't rent it to you. It's not my policy; it's the owner's policy." I told her, "Well, you know, ma'am, I just got back from Korea fighting for a-holes like you, and if they have another war you better send your son 'cause I'm not gonna go..." I used some language that wasn't very nice, but that was fuming after I'd just got back from Korea. And same thing was with houses. We did buy a house in San Fernando later, after my first boy was born. We went to a couple of places and they wouldn't wait on us. We don't stand around for an hour waiting, if they don't wait on you you're not gonna be waited on. We went to this one place and I asked 'em, "You sell to Japanese?" "Hey, we sell to anybody if you can qualify." "Do you have a house?" "We have this one over on Cork Street that somebody's loan fell through." We went to look at it. It was one of those no money down things. The price was low. So we bought it and that really helped us get started into buying better houses. Course, this was in San Fernando. Since we were in San Diego all the time to visit relatives I decided we had to get on the other side of the whole valley, so we went into La Mirada looking for a place and we ran into a bigger problem there. I mean, we went into one tract home, the sales office, and they wouldn't come out to talk to us, but if a white couple walked in, they would run over and bend over for them. I didn't need a baseball bat hittin' me to tell me, so I just said come on, let's go. They're not gonna wait on us. Went to another place, same thing, and then finally went to a third place and guy said, "Yeah, if you can qualify we'll sell you a house. Got a couple over here." He showed us this one house in La Mirada and that's the house we bought, and we were there 'til the, all the kids went all the way through high school.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.