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BN: Okay, so let's go there now to the war. Do you remember, I think you were about nine, ten years old.

RM: I was nine -- ten, I was ten. Yeah, when the war started, of course, I didn't think myself other than an American. It didn't even dawn on me I was Japanese, although I was going to Japanese school. But that morning, I looked out the window and I saw police on every intersection, and I don't know whether they were there for our protection, or because they were afraid we were going to do something or whatever. But that was my first impression of when the war started. And then we went to school normally, like any other day. We would try to be patriotic, and school, we would dress up like a soldier with crepe paper. And then we also noticed that all Japanese families were anxious in there. They were all on edge. People were being taken away, they don't know why he was being taken away or whey this guy was being taken away.

BN: Was anyone in your family among those?

RM: No. but my mother was very worried that my father might be taken away, although there was no reason. Of course, my Japanese school teacher was taken away first, and he was taken away right away. But my neighbor, his father was taken away, Watanabe, his name was Watanabe. So there was a lot of anxiety in the family, so anything Japanese, either destroy it or hide it or do something with it. And so my mother... my father liked Japanese music, that's why we had shortwave radio, we could listen to Japan, listen to the radio. And he used to buy records, we used to go to the record shop. He used to listen to record, I used to go to the toy department, look at the toys. Anyway, so my mother was worried that because he had Japanese music, they might take him away. So she destroyed all the Japanese records. I don't know what else she destroyed, but I still have the obutsudan, I still have it. I think my father got that about 1937 or '38, and I still have it upstairs.

BN: Where was it during the war?

RM: The obutsudan?

BN: Yeah.

RM: My father made a room in the garage, I mean, in the basement, and put all our personal things there and boarded it up with plywood, made a big room and boarded it all up. And so when we came back, everything was there, so we didn't lose those things.

BN: Was it hidden?

RM: Hmm?

BN: Was it sort of hidden? Did he put the plywood up sort of to hide it?

RM: Made it like another room, yeah.

BN: I was just wondering if he did that on purpose so that people wouldn't know that it was there to vandalize or whatever.

RM: Well, people wouldn't vandalize it because we had it rented. We had somebody rent it, had them keep the rent, just give us our house back when we come back. But you could rent it, keep the rent, yeah, so that's what we did. And three flats, so they would have made money.

BN: So the renters, I mean, they didn't pull anything? They did return the property?

RM: Yeah, because it was under my mother's name. Because my mother's a Nisei, so we had our own house. So we were fortunate. And then like even the land in Mendocino County was under my mother's name for my uncle. She took care of all the books, paying the payments and all that, she took care of it for them.

BN: Who was the renter of your house? Was it someone you had some...

RM: I'm not sure, I'm not sure. But before we came back, my father came back early to have it empty so that we can come back.

BN: So in that respect, you were kind of one of the fortunate ones, that you had something to come back to.

RM: Yeah. So we had it emptied, so we had three flats, all emptied, so all our relatives could have a place to come back to.

BN: And then when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that before the exclusion order came, that you and other parts of the extended family that gathered at Esparto.

RM: Esparto, yeah.

BN: Your, Esparto was your...

RM: My mother's sister's place, yeah, Koki Tsuji, and Toshiko, or she got that American name, which, Mary Jane, which is just a given name.

BN: Who all was there? It was your family and...

RM: All the Morimotos, my grandfather, Frank, Fred, William, the boys, and then the two youngest girls, Mae, which is Sumako, and Ayako. There was Ayako, and Mae is the youngest. She married Frank's buddy in the army, so she went to live in Nampa, Idaho.

BN: And then how long were you there before you had to --

RM: Probably short time, I don't know how long it was. I think in this confusion, too, I skipped a grade in this process. I thought I was in the fourth grade in San Francisco. It might have been the fifth, but I thought I was the fourth. But because when I went into Amache, I was in the sixth grade, and that was one year later, so I must have been in the fifth grade though. But I know I skipped some, at least a half a grade there.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.