<Begin Segment 13>

MN: Let me go back to your schooling now. You graduated from Trifolium elementary school, and then from there, which high school did you attend?

DM: I went to Brawley High School from freshman, graduated.

MN: How did you get to Brawley? Did you walk?

DM: There were daily bus services that came around and took us home.

MN: What was the ethnic makeup like at Brawley High School?

DM: Brawley High was, it was mainly a Caucasian school with quite a few Latinos and quite a few Nisei kids. 'Cause there were a lot of farmers in there, Japanese farmers.

MN: Now in your Trifolium elementary school picture, you have one black family in there. Did they also go to Brawley High?

DM: Yeah.

MN: You shared with us some of the sports activities you were in. You were on the tennis team and the softball team. How did you do academically? Did you have a favorite subject?

DM: I was just an average student, C and Bs. I guess my favorite subject was general science and geography. I did take two years of Spanish. My weak subject was mathematics.

MN: What year did you graduate from...

DM: 1937. Then I enrolled in Brawley junior college for two years, and graduated with the... what do they call it? Arts degree, I think they called it. Master of Arts?

MN: AA?

DM: Yeah, AA. I don't think they call it junior college anymore, they call it community college nowadays.

MN: So after you graduated from Brawley junior college, what did you do?

DM: Worked on a farm, and one summer I remember coming to L.A. and I got a job working for a landscaper. He was an Issei man, and he had a business of going around to new houses to install a garden and a lawn. Most of that was done up in the Baldwin Hills area where the houses were going up. And my job was to plant plants around the house and install the lawn. 'Cause in those days, didn't have sod, so the lawn was prepared by sprinkling the seeds. Of course, you have to level the land first, sprinkle the seed, then you cover the seed up with horse manure, ground up horse manure. So that was my job. At that time, my boss's name was George Ohara. He says, "I can't be calling you Takuzo, I want to give you an English name so the customers would, you're talking to." But he says, "You're Dave from now on." Well, he called me Davy. So that's how my name stuck. I worked there maybe about a year or so and went back to the farm. And that's about the time when the war broke out.

MN: So when you were working with Mr. Ohara in Los Angeles, where did you stay?

DM: At his home. He was not a bachelor, he was a divorced man with his own house, big house on Thirty-first Street in the Jefferson area.

MN: So what did you do on the weekends?

DM: Oh, he had another worker that stayed with us, 'cause we stayed in his house. And on Sundays we'd catch the J car to go to J-town. Of course, first thing we did was China meshi. I still remember our favorite dish we always ordered was hamyu. I think that's part of a pork, salted and made into patties. Besides the other dishes that we ordered.

MN: It had the little fish on top?

DM: Yeah.

MN: And then you said you went back to the farm?

DM: Yeah.

MN: Was it because your father needed your help?

DM: Yeah.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.