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BN: Okay, and so, yeah, let's leave your mom there for the moment, and let's go back to your dad's side. So what was your dad's name?

KM: My dad's name was Yoshio Nishimoto. He took the name Dick later on because he liked the name, and so he was Dick Y. Nishimoto. So Dick became his first name and Yoshio became his middle name, and he went by Dick. So he was born in Visalia, California, and his mother passed away when his brother was born, I think. She had asthma, so my grandfather took my father and his brother, who was a baby, my father was two. Took them on a ship back to Japan, to Hiroshima, to be raised by the mother's side. And so my father lived with his grandparents until he was about seventeen or eighteen, and he and his brother came back. His brother might have come back sooner. My father came back, he talked about really loving going to Belmont High School and learning English, or being in a classroom with people that were much younger than he was, and learning to speak English. But he really wanted to stay in America. But his father, when he was going on a ship, on his way to Long Beach to go back to Japan, he asked his father, "Can I stay?" and his father said, "No, it's not a good time." And so he never, I said, "Did you ask him why?" and he said no, it's just, he went back. So I think at that time, I don't know if he ever thought he was going to come back. So he stayed in Japan 'til he was, I think another ten years, until he was like twenty-eight. And at that time, he was kind of into more spiritual things, so he was always into different religions. There was even some talk that he was, not a monk, but something like that. He was so much into religion and things like that. But his uncle told him that, "You need to go back to America because you'll be drafted by the Japanese army, and you'll lose your citizenship. So you need to go back now."

So he went back, he came back to the United States. And he opened a little produce stand over in Hoover Boulevard, apparently, and of course lost out when the curfew was issued. But he was drafted, actually, in January of 1942, after Pearl Harbor, which I find very odd, but I did see the draft card. But he was the oldest child. His father had remarried and had two more children. So there were four boys, two brothers and then two half brothers. And they had a market in Boyle Heights, the Silver Moon Market across from Roosevelt High School. And so they were into that kind of business. I think my grandfather originally in Visalia, had run a boarding house with his wife, and I don't really know what he did after he came back without my dad. That family, I don't know much about that grandfather. And he really disassociated himself with his family in Japan, so my father was raised by his mother's family, there was no contact with the father's family. So that's kind of a mystery.

BN: Did your father talk much about growing up in Japan as a Nisei?

KM: You know, not really. He talked about he and his brother, they always compared. They said my father, when he got any kind of money, would run off and buy something for himself. His brother would buy something and bring it back for everybody. So it was sort of this, I mean, I don't know what those stories mean, but I'm sure it was not, the pictures don't look very happy, but that might be Japanese photos, they all look very serious, you know.

BN: Japanese style.

KM: Yeah, Japanese style. But I don't think it was maybe the happiest time of his life, although later on, he talked about his grandparents, and they were really his parents. So I think he was thinking more about what they did for him, and so appreciating. But I think the fact that he kind of went into religion, which is very solitary, I feel like he probably was more of that, had that kind of existence, was not real, he really didn't talk about fun times in Japan. It may not have been fun, I don't know.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.