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TI: Well, I was just thinking, it was such a transition for you because you had both your mother and sister, and then shortly after, they were both gone, and it was just you and your father. So that must have been a big change for you.

MN: Yes, it was. They talk about "latchkey kids," well, I'm very familiar, I always had a key hanging on a string. And I would go to grade school, come home, call my dad on the phone, we fortunately had a phone. Call my dad, and tell him I was home and I was preparing to go to Japanese school. So there was school all day long from morning 'til night. Japanese school lasted two hours, like four to six.

TI: Now, when you came home from regular school, did you make yourself a little snack, or was there food there for you?

MN: I don't remember. Oh, I might have taken a, like a Japanese orange, mikan, or maybe a little snack. I might have eaten something, kind of snacked, whatever was there, and left. But I really, truly wasn't, I don't remember being hungry.

TI: Now when you were doing this all by yourself, did you notice what other kids were getting? I mean, did you ever feel like you were missing something? Because other kids would come home and maybe the mother would have a snack for them, or they would have all these things, did you ever feel that you didn't have enough?

MN: I think I just had to make the adjustment. It was one of those things that you had to deal with, and I just did what... just did whatever was necessary, I think. My dad was sort of, you had to be self-reliant and take care of yourself.

TI: And so at the end of the day, your dad would come home from work and then he would cook dinner?

MN: Well, before I went to Japanese school, I think I enrolled probably maybe a little later, a year, well, I'm not quite sure. But the first, after my mother passed away, I would... let's see... I'm sorry.

TI: No, so the question is, so when your father... who cooked dinner at night? I mean, how would...

MN: Oh, that's right, I'm sorry. Well, after school, after coming home from grade school, before I was enrolled in Japanese school, I would go over to the store and stay with my dad until he was through with his work. And in the meantime, my father would write a lot of... that must have been second grade. Because my father would make a page full of additions and subtractions and math on there, and then he had a soroban, an abacus, and I would work that and do my problems as my entertainment from coming home from school, to keep me busy doing things like that. And then I used to wander in the jewelry store and look at all the rings and all the pretty things and things like that. But so that's what happened, and then on the way home... this is way back when, and I don't think, you wouldn't do this kind of thing now, but we would start from one corner, and he would, to meet at the opposite corner, you know what I mean?

TI: You mean go around the block?

MN: Yeah, right, go around the block and meet at the other. And oh, I'd walk as fast as I could. I didn't run, I didn't cheat, and I walked as fast as I could. And, of course, my father is going to have a longer stride, and he walked fast. That's why, to this day, if I kind of walk too slow, I kind of, I lose my balance. I'm used to walking fast. But anyway, that was kind of a fun thing.

TI: A little game that you and your dad... it was like a nice little game that you and your father played.

MN: Right. And in those days, you didn't think about bad things happening. Never gave it a thought, you just mind your own business and meet my dad.

TI: So how late did your father work? When did he finish work?

MN: I think it must have been like five, I think. I would imagine five o'clock. And then he would come home and then we'd have rice and whatever he made. I don't recall all... I remember rice, but I don't know whatever else we had. And my dad was very good. I remember going to, when I was going to grade school, you have to take a lunch, and my dad used to make... I don't remember peanut butter and jelly, but I remember like a fried egg sandwich, that's pretty good.

TI: So he was actually a pretty good cook then, he could do different things in the kitchen. A lot of the Issei men weren't, didn't, never cooked.

MN: Well, that's true. But I think he probably had to adapt to the whole situation and do the best he could. And when I think about it, I think my dad really did a lot. I could have been better. I could have helped him a lot more, I guess.

TI: Well, how about like church? Did you and your father go to a church?

MN: Well, the one he belonged to was not close. [Interruption] No, I think I visited several different churches, tried it out or whatever, and he kind of left it up to me whether I understood what was going on and whether it was Buddhist church or Catholic church. Of course, the Catholic people probably noticed that we... I remember going to, I think it was high mass or something, and probably in the morning, I remember going there. But I didn't belong to any specific church at that time. It's after World War II, then I went to the Methodist church.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.