Densho Digital Archive - Henry Miyatake Interview II (denshovh-mhenry-02-0023)

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TI: So, so tell me. You, so you were doing primarily gardening work coming back.

HM: Yeah.

TI: And what'd you, how long did you do that?

HM: Well. Oh, let's see. I did that for about a year and a half and then I got my own truck and then I was doing gardening on my own. And this one, one weekend there was a picnic at Lincoln Park. And I had a couple of buddies, Eddie Nagai and Sadamu Takashima. We were going to the picnic in Lincoln Park And I was driving my pickup through the Fauntleroy five, five points intersection there. And a City Light truck came through -- supposedly with their lights on, and they had red paint over their regular lights, auxiliary lights -- and he came through that signal stop and he hit us broad side. And anyway, luckily none of us were hurt. And I think Eddie had the serious, most serious one. He had a gash over his head, I think. But that put me out of business because it took my truck out of existence. And then the City put us under some legal suit and I had to go get an attorney at that point. And by the time I finished paying off the attorney and... it was one of these situations where the City said that we were at fault, and we said they were at fault because they had no audible siren and all this kind of stuff. Then they, then they said, the judge says both parties are at fault. So shared fault situation, so tough luck. So I lost the truck and all. And I, I didn't realize I had been injured a little bit and I started getting headaches and all this kind of stuff. And I decided I would take it easy for a while.

And this was 1947, I guess, and my brother came back from the army. And at that point I started trying to get my ham license. Then he, he tried to help me a little bit in that area, get the ham license. And then I got my federal communication commercial licenses for radiotelegraph, radiotelephone. And I had it figured, well next thing I'll do is probably go work for the merchant marine as a radio operator. That was my objective. That's the reason why I was getting the FCC licenses.