<Begin Segment 12>
TI: But just from memory, what were some of the families that you can remember? Because I remember growing up, oftentimes when I would meet someone or mention, you'd say, "Oh, that's a Maryknoll person," or Maryknoll family. What were some of the families that you could remember?
MI: Oh, they were ordinary people.
TI: No, not just ordinary, I mean, the names. Some of the clan, almost like. The Matsudairas?
MI: The Matsudairas, they had fourteen kids. I just know John, Mike, Tebo, Pauline and Jimmy. The rest I don't know.
TI: Right, but they had fourteen kids, so they were a family...
MI: We all had big families.
TI: So the Kinoshitas were...
MI: We had six.
[Interruption]
MI: But like Bako went to Pacific School, but he joined the Maryknoll Boy Scouts.
TI: Oh. And so is that where he met, like the Aratani, were they --
MI: Oh, Aratanis were staunch Catholics.
TI: So they were also part of the Maryknoll?
MI: Sakamotos.
TI: Because I remember Augie Aratani.
MI: And then James Sakamoto, later on, he joined Maryknoll and he was the Courier publisher.
TI: Oh, so James Sakamoto was much older than...
MI: Yeah, but he came from back east and then he was already blind from boxing. And then he started the Courier, a magazine, the newspaper.
TI: So that's interesting. So Maryknoll is much larger than just the school, then, it was kind of like a church?
MI: Well, church and school.
TI: So James Sakamoto joined the church.
MI: Church, uh-huh.
TI: So he would start attending mass?
MI: At Maryknoll.
TI: I see.
MI: And then Misao, his wife, used to bring him to church. And later on, Marie and Joy were born.
TI: Well, so your oldest sister, Hiroko...
MI: She worked for...
TI: James Sakamoto.
MI: James Sakamoto that when the evacuation came, they made, I don't know why, he made Jim Sakamoto the head of evacuation, and Hiroko was a secretary.
TI: Okay, we'll get back to that a little later, I'll try to keep this more in sequence. Were there other, kind of, people that were prominent? I remember you introduced me to a Mr. Kobayashi?
MI: Tom Kobayashi. Because he was a staunch Catholic.
TI: And he had a lot of records.
MI: Like Roy Sakamoto, he was, like, I was his wife's flower girl when she graduated from Immaculate.
TI: And so in the same way, you talk about Kagoshima, if someone were part of the Maryknoll group...
MI: Well, a lot of the Kagoshima-ken people when to Maryknoll. Like Kodamas, I think the Minagiras went, too, and Suzukis. I mean, I got to look at the book, I can't remember names.
TI: And this gets back to, well, actually, I want to talk about him now. So a key person at Maryknoll was Father Tibesar. And so he was the Catholic priest, but what made him kind of interesting was he was also, he could speak Japanese. So would he do some of his sermons in Japanese?
MI: Oh, yeah. Sunday mass was too long. [Laughs] We'd sit there and sit there, do it in English first and then Japanese, and oh god.
TI: Oh, so your parents... but would your parents come then?
MI: No, they weren't Catholics. I think they became baptized in camp, after the Bako time.
TI: So going back to when you first described Maryknoll, you said it was a missionary...
MI: Missionary school.
TI: And so missionary meaning it was a way to really try to introduce the faith.
MI: The faith. And then they had a good school, I think that's the reason why so many went there. And on top of that, to have one hour of Japanese was better yet.
TI: Now, when I go down to Los Angeles, and even the Bay Area, there were Maryknoll schools in different cities.
MI: Maryknoll is, used to be real big in L.A. And then the Maryknoll sisters convent is there.
TI: Now, did you ever talk to anyone that went through that school and could compare how your experience was?
MI: No. Because I didn't know any of the L.A. people until camp, after camp. And then a lot of the Seattle people went to the Maryknoll in L.A.
<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.