<Begin Segment 26>

[Showing photographs]

MN: Can I bring that photo that you have with the Hirohito? Tell us what this photo is. Can you hold it up? Tell us what this photo is.

DM: This was taken at the NYK Building when the emperor came to visit one day. So I rushed outside when he was coming out to take his picture. And one of my friends that was on the other side took this picture, and he gave me a copy because I was in it.

MN: And you're in that photo, and you can see Emperor Hirohito walking by.

DM: Yeah, so I had my picture taken with the emperor.

[Interruption]

DM: I was told by my dad that his parents built a bridge in the town of Komatsu where he was from, built this bridge across the river. So if I had a chance, "Go to Komatsu and see if you can see this bridge." So while I was in Kanazawa, I made a trip to Komatsu which was about ten miles south of Kanazawa, went to look for the bridge, and all I found was a little concrete bridge over a small creek, meaning that the original wooden bridge was torn down and the river had swung into a little creek since the time he was there.

This is an old house. This is the house that we lived in back in Brawley in the olden days in the '20s and the '30s. That's what the houses looked like.

This picture was taken on a farm when I was about two or three years old. That's me on my dad's shoulder, and one of the girls is Jun. And taken with a family friend and his kids. Is there a dog in there? Oh, yeah. I don't remember whose dog that was, but I guess every farm had a dog.

Well, this is the same picture with the houses we lived in in those days.

MN: It's a better close-up. Yeah, it's a nicer close-up. Is that your portable house?

DM: Yeah.

MN: That's a pretty big house then.

DM: That was one of the bigger ones, I guess.

This is a picture of my dad with a team of mules. The mules were used to pull the equipment on the farm.

This is a picture of the one room at Trifolium school. I'm in there somewhere. That's me right there. I must have been about age of thirteen, fourteen. No, must have been twelve, thirteen.

That's a picture of both rooms at the school, in other words, the entire student body.

MN: I notice some of those kids are barefoot.

DM: In the country school, we went barefooted. And nothing fancy in the clothing, and I'm in there somewhere.

MN: Did you go to school barefoot, too?

DM: Oh, yeah. That's me, right there.

Another picture of the school a couple years later.

MN: Was this Japanese school?

DM: This was our Sunday school class at the Methodist church. I'm in there on the first row with my tongue hanging out.

MN: I thought you didn't go to church. You went to Sunday school?

DM: Yeah, Sundays. No, no, this could have been the Japanese class we had on Saturdays. No, this was the Sunday school.

MN: Oh, so you did go to Sunday school.

DM: Uh-huh.

MN: How long did you go to Sunday school?

DM: Whenever my dad had time to take me into town.

This was me when I came back from Japan. It was taken in front of a hotel in San Francisco.

MN: So this is right after you got off of Angel Island.

DM: Yeah, uh-huh. I must have been about four or five years old. Oh, where's the other picture?

The houses in Japan were typically like this. This is the backyard of my aunt's house.

MN: Where was that?

DM: This is the backyard of my aunt's house with my cousin Fumi, who was her daughter. And this is a picture of the front of the house, you notice how the fences are made out of brush. And the two girls in there were my two cousins, Fumi and... I can't think of the other cousin's name.

MN: I have one more question. How did you get your scar here?

DM: My scar on my forehead?

MN: Uh-huh.

DM: I must have been about eleven, twelve years old, attending Japanese class on Saturday. A group of older boys were having rock fights and I happened to get in the way, and a rock hit me on the forehead.

MN: That was a big rock.

DM: It caused a cavity there. I guess they took me to the doctor right away and patched me up.

MN: Was it a Japanese doctor that they took you to?

DM: I don't remember. No, it was Dr. Foster. He was our family doctor. And the guy that threw the rock was one of the boys of the Ishikawa family.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.