Densho Digital Archive - Ted Tsukiyama Interview (denshovh-tted-02-0011)

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PF: So tell me about Masaji Marumoto.

TT: Well, there's a book.

PF: What do you remember about him?

TT: Well, he was family friends. He knew my parents, and, well, he had a remarkable story, but he was a remarkable person in that he had a tremendously high IQ. And just intellectually head and shoulders above all the Nisei. He's the smartest Nisei that I've ever come across. He also had a great power of focus, concentration. My first job was with him, and I remember he's so intense that he's walking down the street, and you said, "Hello, Maru," and he wouldn't even hear you. He'd just walk right past. You know, we started each day, he had so many things to do and all that, I learned to leave him alone. Don't get near him during his busy time when he's doing one thing. And only late in the afternoon when he's more relaxed would I approach him, because he was so intense. A remarkable guy. He did not have the social charms, he was not a bedroom warrior, and one that strokes you and all that. Usually blunt, direct, you knew where you stood with Masaji Marumoto. And, of course, his legal abilities were, you might say, legend. I remember Hung Wo Ching, the great financier and businessman, his attorney was Masaji Marumoto. And people said, "Hey, how come you're using a Japanese lawyer?" And he says, "I can't trust pake lawyers like I can trust Maru." And that's the way it was. Yeah, usually most pakes will stick with pakes. But it just shows how exceptional his exceptional character and talents stood out for people like Hung Wo Ching. And he was classmates with Hiram Fong and Chin Ho and all those big successful guys. The class of, McKinley class of 1924, I think, that whole class was real big names. Ten, twelve top leaders in the community all came from that same class. He got into Harvard very easily.

During the war, I don't know how they allowed him to volunteer, and here he was married with one or two children already, but somehow the authorities wouldn't let Shigeo volunteer, but they allowed Maru to volunteer. And so Masaji was with the first group of Nisei here who were recruited in June of 1943. So he went off to Camp Savage, and, of course, his Japanese for some reason was excellent. He could read, he could read a Japanese newspaper. And most of us, like me, we went twelve years of Japanese school, we can't read a newspaper, but he could. So I guess they recognized that at Camp Savage and they even made him an instructor, and for some reason, at a time when they were not commissioning any Nisei to become officers. They picked Maru to go to OCS, so he was one of the, maybe the only one if not the few who became officers and were sent to Judge Advocate school. And I think his story, you can read it.

So he had a, well, he contributed a lot to the rebuilding of Okinawa. One of his first jobs when he got to Okinawa was to go around and visit all of the refugee camps to recruit some of the old leaders of the Okinawan community to come back and serve as interim leaders for a temporary government to help U.S. Civil Affairs... CAR, USCAR. And to this day, his name and memory is very highly regarded in Okinawa because he was there to help them rise out of the ashes. And all that, and then he came back and opened his practice. So he was with attorney Robert Murakami, Murakami and Marumoto was a partnership. But somewhere around 1950 they split, and right after Marumoto split with Murakami, he was a sole practitioner. And the first associate he hired was Ted Tsukiyama. [Laughs] 1950.

PF: So he got his law degree before the war.

TT: Yes. He was a lawyer before. No... yeah, he was a lawyer before the war. One of the pioneer Nisei lawyers. The title of his book kind of points out that he had a remarkable, he was sort of a one of a kind. I forgot the title of the book, but...