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BN: Now, before we get to the war, I just wanted to ask a couple more things about San Francisco. Now you're in a city, there's kind of a Japanese community there, I'm wondering if your family was involved in any kind of Japanese church or kenjinkai or any kind of community activities at that point?

RM: No. My father was Seicho-no-Ie, you know Seicho-no-Ie? He got into that. As far as I remember, I remembered going to a meeting in Pescadero when I was in the first grade. And the reason I remember is the early books of Seicho-no-Ie had beans just as it's coming out of the ground with a couple of shoots. It was on all the covers of the books. So I remember going to this house where they had that book. So I remember that first Seicho-no-Ie meeting that my father took me there. And I remember that the house was next to a running brook, you know, waterway. But that's about all I remember.

BN: Was it just your father?

RM: My father.

BN: Or the whole family?

RM: Just my father, just my father. It was because of his ulcers, you could cure the ulcers. In fact, there were many cases where illnesses were apparently cured. And, in fact, he said that in x-rays, his x-rays were shown that his ulcers were completely gone, but it resurfaced. He had ulcers until he had surgery.

BN: Did he continue with Seicho-no-Ie through camp?

RM: Yeah. After the war, he was the leader. In fact, he was the highest ranking non-minister in northern California. And then in the summers he went to Japan to the Seicho-no-Ie training center, and he did that for maybe, I don't know how many years, at least three years on his summer, when he was working. He was working at Simmons mattress company, that was what he did, worked at Simmons. Because that was the only job he could get after the war, Simmons Mattress. And then on the summers, vacation, he would go to Japan and study at the Seicho-no-Ie training center in Uji and in Tokyo, and he became a minister. So he would go all over northern California lecturing on weekends. And that was what he was going to do after he retired was to keep ministering. But unfortunately, he was killed. In fact, another thing that he was going to do was Koki Tsuji, his wife Mary Jane, or Toshiko, got sleeping sickness in Esparto. And so the only thing was to get away from that heat, so he moved to Lomita and became a gardener. And he was a Boy Scout, he took the kids camping and all that stuff, and he started building a trimaran in his back yard. And then it got so big, he had to build it on the front yard. And then finally the city says you can't park it here, you have to take it to the marina. But anyway, he finished it, and him and my dad was going to go to Hawaii on that trimaran. But my father got killed, so he couldn't do that anymore. But he took us on that trimaran out in the ocean there. It was very nice, a trimaran's a nice, kind of steadier. But that's how handy he was. All his furniture was homemade, he made his own rocking chair and everything. But he was a farmer so they had to always make their own things, and so he was very handy.

BN: That kind of skill came in handy in camp, I bet.

RM: Yeah. And photography, he was our family photographer.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.