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MN: So when you wanted to return to the United States in 1950, did you have any problems?
MT: Yeah, I had to get dollars.
MN: You had money problems. [Laughs] But no passport or visa problems.
MT: No. I have to get a passport, too, five years the passport's no good anyway. And besides that, they took it away from us when we got on the ship to go back. So you don't have a passport, so I had to get a passport. I had to go to the American embassy and prove who I was, and then they take your picture and give you a passport. But I had to borrow the money from my uncle from over here. You can only borrow three hundred dollars. Well, three hundred dollars, the ship fare is going to cost me two hundred and eighty, I'm only going to have twenty dollars in my pocket. And smart me, I saw all those candies when I got off in Hawaii to look around, I had to buy it. So I spent ten dollars there. [Laughs] I had ten dollars when I got to Frisco. Smart me, huh?
MN: So once you got to San Francisco, what did you do?
MT: Then my uncle came over there and he... the one that, well, my dad loaned him, when he wanted his wife from Japan, he didn't have enough money in the bank, so my father put money into his account for him. So that'll look like he got a lot of money, so he can get a wife. And that's how his wife came. But he never paid it back. My dad, too, was good natured, "That's okay." But anyway, I borrowed it from him, and when they asked for it, right away he said... and I came back and he picked me up over there and then he told me, he says, "Farm, you can make money here and work hard and then make money." I said no. Imperial Valley stuff was still there. I said, "No, I'm not gonna be a farmer." I said, "I don't care what, I don't want to be." So he got hold of this friend that was in Santa Barbara, and I came over there to Santa Barbara, and he found me a place in West Lost Angeles, it was a boarding house. And he says, "Yeah, I'll show you how to be a gardener. You can be a gardener, you can make good money. But you don't know how to do anything so you can come and live in my boarding house, I'm not gonna pay you any money, but I'll show you how to use the equipment and how to do the gardening work." Hey, to me, I didn't care as long as I can get a job. So we came over there. He worked me twelve hours a day, six days a week, and then on Sundays, most of the time, almost half a day. But I was learning how to do the gardening work. And whenever I had half a day on a Sunday, I used to go out and dig pansies, put 'em into baskets so they can be sold at the market. Anything for money, that's how we started out.
Then when I got pretty good in gardening, then found a place in, near Jefferson and fourth Avenue, the family, the father had a heart attack and he couldn't work. And the son-in-law, he needed help. I said, "Okay, I'll take the job." So he said you get room and board and so much money, so I said, "Okay, I'll take it." That was when I started having money in my pocket, and so I could start sending goods to my mother. And in those days, in a week we could only send one package. So you could only send so many pounds, so you make up things and you send it. That's what I used to do.
MN: What were you sending?
MT: Sugar and coffee and anything, well, over there, those things are, they don't have any, so they sell these too, my mother could use it, too. So you get the canned goods, like they had corned beef and things like that. Things that my mother could open and make for her to eat, because my brother was still living with her. He stayed there all that time. That's how we started out.
MN: So your brother and your parents, did they ever come back to the United States?
MT: My brother came back for about, oh, gee, a couple of years or less. When I came to America, he went to Tokyo and got a job as a civil service job working for the American navy. Then he was there for a while and then they said, "We're going to cut back," so he lost his job. So they told him, "There's a job in San Francisco that's open that you can do." He'll be good because he can read Japanese and English, 'cause he was real good by then. So he came back and first opening they had in Japan, he went back, 'cause his wife was from Japan, born in Japan, she didn't know English. She didn't want to leave over here for nothing. Even though there's a lot of things here, and in Japan they didn't have too much, for her, Japan is better. So they went back and then they lived in Yokohama until he retired.
MN: Is your brother still alive right now?
MT: Well, he's still there, yeah. He's probably healthier than me, because he used to... oh, my goodness, I went back there and visited him and, you climb that mountain every morning and go over there and over there and then come back? He said, yeah. He said he used to walk five, six miles up and down the hills. So he was healthier than I am.
<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.