<Begin Segment 4>

BN: And then you mentioned that he came to the U.S. when he was seventeen. Do you know how long that was?

KM: I don't really know, but I don't know. But I do know that I think the time that he was going back, was about 1929, it was like '29, '30. So understandably, it was the Depression, so when his father told him it's not a good time, that might have been the reason why. I don't think he was here that long, maybe a year or two, and he was really trying to learn English.

BN: Right, so he must have picked up some if he's...

KM: He picked up some, but I know that he really loved being here.

BN: Right, right. And then he goes back to Japan for a number of years and comes back, I guess, for good.

KM: For good.

BN: This would have been in the late '30s.

KM: Late '30s, yeah.

BN: So he's, when the war breaks out, he still has the market.

KM: He has a little produce stand. I guess he had produce stands on the street. So on Hoover, they talked about it.

BN: It was a big Nisei occupation.

KM: Yeah, it was a big occupation, but I didn't know they had these stands that were on streets. So anyway, so he lost that, which was when the curfew occurred, and then was drafted in January. So very much, it's kind of interesting because even though he had been raised by his father and stepmother, and then the market was actually named, I think, after his brother, Tom, because he was the oldest citizen child here, my father was in Japan, so they named it Tom's Market. So my father was kind of like, I feel like, the outsider in that family because he wasn't raised with them, but he came later, like a few years before the war. But when he was drafted, he sent all of his money to them. He followed what they told him to do, and I think he did say something about... anyway. Whatever they told him to do, he did, even though he really didn't have a family, close family relationship with him. And he visited them at Manzanar.

BN: I was going to ask, so he's drafted, and then with the rest of his family, or U.S. family who goes...

KM: To Manzanar.

BN: Is he able to keep in touch with the grandparents that raised him in Japan during the war, or what happens?

KM: You know, I don't know. Because my father was Kibei, his Japanese was better than his English. And because my mother was Nisei and a dominant presence in our family, both culturally and otherwise, he really didn't have a chance to say that much, or share that much. It was kind of like, well, his stories were Japanese. It's not what we want to know here. Even his religion was over there, kind of strange. So we didn't really find out that much about my father, what he was doing. I'm sure he wrote home; I'm sure he did. But maybe he didn't, because in those later years, he was looking at photos of his grandparents and reminiscing. And I know one of the uncles that did tell him to come back, died after the bombing of Hiroshima. Because they lived in a town that was outside of the city, but he happened to be in the city, and was exposed to radiation, so he died a few days, I think, what I understand, a few days later, so he passed away. The grandparents, I never talked about them.

BN: Do you know much about his experience in the army, I assume? And then he ended up in MIS?

KM: Well, he ended up in MIS. Did he go there directly? He might have. I mean, it's kind of odd. He was drafted in 1942, and he definitely was Kibei. I mean, why, I don't know, maybe were they already thinking about the MIS? I don't know when the MIS was set up. He didn't really talk about what happened before that, I just know that we have seen photos of him very happy with the other soldiers, and some of the Anglo officers, people like that. All I know is that he was a cook at the MIS headquarters, talked about some shenanigans or oversleeping one time, and they had one hour to get all the food ready for the soldiers, and talked about some guy named Turk (Ogimachi). Anyway, another Japanese Nisei guy that said, "Okay, we're going to put all the bacon under the burner, under the broiler, and so they're racing around. And so these are the stories my father told. He never talked about classes, teaching, any of that. Did he do it? I don't know. I would imagine they would have taken advantage of his skills, at last his Japanese speaking skills, and even if his English wasn't that great, he knew some but he never talked about that. Maybe he was told not to. And my father was probably one that followed orders like that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.