<Begin Segment 9>

RM: So that's Pescadero. Then it must have been about 1938, I guess we moved to the city, San Francisco, because my father couldn't take farming, it was too rough on him. So we first moved to Myrtle Street, which was, I think, Block... it's kind of like an alley which was the other side of Geary or O'Farrell. It was behind the Salvation Army or something, it seemed like. Anyway, there was an apartment that we lived in there for a short time. I remember learning... not ice skating, but roller skating. We would roller skate there and almost get hit by a car and all that. And then we moved to Buchanan Street right in J-Town near Bush, which was right around the corner from Kinmon Gakuen, which was, our backyards were against each other. So I went to Kinmon Gakuen.

BN: What did your father or your parents, what did they do for a living at that point?

RM: My father, when we went to the city, was a painter. He painted houses. So that's what he did. He had a lot of things in the basement that, in fact, when the war started, we put everything in the basement, boarded it all up. It was three flats, so we lived on one flat and rented two flats, so made income.

BN: It sounded like you had other family nearby?

RM: I had Haluto, that soldier, his family lived in... I don't know where they went before the war, if it was after the war or before the war. Must have been before the war. They lived on Clay Street, you know, it's about five blocks away. So when the war started, California Street was the border, you couldn't cross California Street. You couldn't visit them anymore. So when we went to camp, I think they first... no, I think they went with us, I'm not sure. Can't remember if they went to Esparto.

BN: And they were... his family, this is on your father's side?

RM: Yeah, my father's side.

BN: One of your father's brothers.

RM: Yeah. But when we went to camp, my mother's family all went also. Not all of them, because those that were married didn't go, but the unmarried, the three boys and two girls went with us, because it was their sister's place in Esparto. In fact, that's their place. Koki Tsuji, the one that, he took the picture, the Tsuji family, he was the oldest son. And when he graduated high school, he wanted to be a photographer, so he actually went back east, I don't know exactly where. But he went to photography school, and while he was there, his father died. So he had to come back and take over the family. And so he never got to be a professional photographer, but he was always our family photographer. So when my grandfather and grandmother came from Japan in 1938, I guess it was, we took them to Esparto, and so he took their pictures under those blossoms.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.