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TI: Okay, so we're going to go back to that, but I'm going to reel you back to Chicago.

JM: Okay, we're going back.

TI: So you left the camps -- because I want to go through a little bit more of your life and then come back to Glide. So from Rohwer, you said your biological dad went to establish a Buddhist church.

JM: Well, he went to Chicago, got us a place, and helped establish a Buddhist church. I don't know that much about him because my mother did not talk about him very much after they divorced, and they divorced soon after the camps.

TI: So you and your mother went to Chicago and met up with your biological dad, and then you said shortly after they divorced.

JM: They divorced. He had met another woman and basically left us. And I remember, those years I remember well. I remember my mother having to sit in the dark or a dim room and do piecework. The American Legion flags, you know, the American Legion ribbons, she'd do the flowers, tie the flowers on these crepe paper poppies. And I don't know if she'd get a penny a flower or whatever, just to make ends meet, to put some food on the table. And she worked two jobs, and I was pretty much babysat by the streets or the movies. So she would put me in the movies on Saturdays when I wasn't in school, and I would sit there from nine o'clock in the morning until she finished work, and so I would see the same movies over and over and over again, which is why I'm maybe addicted to movies. But we also were so poor that we had to go to a Japanese American dentist who I will not name, and he molested both of us. And it was...

TI: And how did you know that he molested your mother? Did she talk about it?

JM: Well, because she said, "I wish you would stay in the room. You have to stay in the room so that you can protect me." And I'm going, "What does that mean?" And then when he was drilling me, I could feel his hands between my legs, so I assumed that she was being molested also. And I think also because we were poor, and he allowed us to pay, he didn't charge us as much. In fact, we couldn't even see a white dentist, we were being discriminated against. And it was very difficult times.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright (c) 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.