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BN: Well, let's set that aside for now, and then let's go to your mother's side.

RM: Okay. On my mother's side, my mother is a Nisei, she was born in Mountain View, California, in 1912. And my grandfather came in 1903 from Wakayama. It's funny that the name of the area was called Chikago, Chikago, Matsushima. Matsushima, and I don't know which is the cho or the chi or whatever it is. But I noticed, in fact, I have, what do you call that, passport.

BN: Okay, this is your mother's father.

RM: My mother's father's passport. In fact, I gave one to the museum when they were having that... Hiyami. What's his name? Hiyami?

BN: Hayami.

RM: Hayami, yeah, when they were having his story. I gave them one of my...

BN: And then what was your mother's name?

RM: Morimoto. So my grandfather was Mitsugoro. He was the chonan, the oldest son, so he could have inherited everything that the family had, which was quite a large parcel of land, just kind of north, I guess, north of Wakayama city near the river. There was a restaurant named after that river in Torrance. What was the name of that river? Oh, I can't remember. But anyway, he had a large parcel of land there. So they could inherit it all, but his best friend, Kiichiro Matsumura, came earlier that year, 1903, and told my grandfather to come and join 'em, "Because you could make a lot of money. There's a lot of opportunities here." So my grandfather, who was already married at that time. He had a son, but he left him in Japan and he came and found out that it wasn't that easy. Wages were twenty-five cents a day, he told me. And so you couldn't make a living on twenty-five cents a day, so he started working for the railroad. He said they were paying about seventy-five cents a day. And so he worked for railroad for about maybe six years, saved all his money.

BN: Where...

RM: I don't know where exactly, but it's probably the various trunk lines from the main line that was already built by the Chinese. But that's how the Japanese community got started throughout the country, just following the railroads. But anyway, he worked for the railroad for about six years and saved his money. And they went to buy a farm in Mountain View, about five acres. And where Moffat Field is, my mother said that's where they farmed that originally. But he was always ambitious or looking ahead. So he wanted something bigger. So he leased the land from the Castro family. The Castro family was quite a big landholder in the San Jose area. And so they got a, bigger land there, and so he hired two Japanese families to work for him, my grandfather. One was the Yamaji family, and the other was, I think, Nishimoto. And so my mother used to say that when they were taking the horse and buggy to, the Japanese community used to have outdoor shibai, plays and things like that, so they would all go up there with their horse and buggy. And so they would go out there and she said one time the horse got away. I don't know how they got home, she never finished that story.

BN: Where was your mother...

RM: My mother is the oldest, she was the oldest, and so she had to work like a man. My grandfather treated her like the son that he didn't have. So she was born in 1912. She was the oldest from the second marriage, because my grandfather's first wife died in Japan while he was working on the railroad. And so he remarried and married his best friend's sister, Umeno Matsumura. So that's my grandmother.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.