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CC: And then, again, we'll talk more about incarceration in a little bit, but why don't you tell us, because I find your mom's story of the work that she did over the course of her life interesting.

MM: Oh, yeah.

CC: Can you give us the background on that?

MM: My mom was... actually, right when she graduated high school, she had a job as a bank teller. She's really good at the abacus, and I realized that later on in life, but I'll tell you about that. She was, so she was a bank teller and then they got married and came here. And then she was a waitress at the restaurant where they worked. She got pregnant while she was working there, she was pregnant with me. And I think one of the reasons I really liked music is because I think whatever you do when you're pregnant carries on to your fetus. Anyway, she said she used to walk down these stairs and would see this piano all the time and wish she could play the piano. So I don't know if that has anything to do with anything, but she worked as a waitress there. And then, let's see, then during camp, well, you don't want to hear about that yet? Okay. So later? Okay. So after camp, let's see, what happened? She had some jobs as a housemaid, and there was one lady in particular, her name was Mrs., it starts with an M. She was really nice, and she was at the Olive Hotel or something downtown, and my mom would take me there sometimes with her. And by then I was learning to play the violin, and I remember this lady, she was wealthy, living in this hotel, Grand Old Hotel downtown, and so she bought me this pink dress to wear for when I performed. I remember that, I have a picture of her somewhere. So she did that for a little bit, but mostly she was a waitress. She waitered at the old, what was the name of that department, Rhodes, I think there was a Rhodes department store. And then she did another job somewhere else waitressing, and then she finally got a job at the Women's University Club, which was the one that was the best because it was a nicer place, and she was really good at what she did. But let's see, I can't remember. Was that before or after the... oh yeah, that was after. Sorry, I skipped a whole area. [Laughs] Where she was... let's see, I can't remember for sure. She was a waitress and then, yeah, oh, so when they had the restaurant after the laundry, she was a waitress at the restaurant that my uncle and my dad got together, I guess. I don't know how they worked that. But she was a waitress and I remember her doing the books with my uncle after the day, and so she was working the abacus. And one of the things I remember is how fast she could do the abacus, just the click-click-click-click, really fast, so she said she was really good at that.

But her last, next to last job was at the Women's University Club as a waitress, and I'll never forget this one thing. She came home and she said -- well, some of the bigwigs used to go there -- and I don't know if you know who Senator Jackson was but he was a pig. [Laughs] Anyway, she came home livid one day because she had been waitressing when he was there, and he slapped her on the butt and called her a "mamasan." So she was just livid when she came home. Anyway, I've never forgotten that story. But one of the things is that when you've worked at a job a long time, and there comes a point at which that was not her favorite thing to do, she only did it because she had to earn money. And once we were all, the children, me, my two brothers were not under her care or my dad's care. She quit that job. She had had enough, she quit, and she decided she was going to go to beauty school. She was fifty at this time, and we thought that was really old to be changing your mind. But she decided she was going -- which is something she'd always wanted to do from when she was young -- was work on people's hair. I can attest to that because from when I was, like, five, I kind of remember her messing around with my hair all the time. Okay, so she did go to beauty school, and I remember my son Jim, he was in middle school, and he used to help her with the scientific terms and everything, and I was just so amazed that she could go to Spokane all by herself and take the test that she needed to take in order to become a beautician.

So that was her last job, and she worked until probably three weeks before she died. She worked until she was just in her seventies, because she just had to. She didn't earn very much and she didn't get very much in social security, and neither did my dad, because they didn't earn that much. And one of the things that she was really pissed off about, and I can understand because she lived in Kawabe House at the time, and she had some neighbors. And I won't say which ethnicity they were, but they were immigrants, and they were getting more money than she was per month, and she had put all her, every month, she had put money into social security and not getting as much as these immigrants who were getting paid way more than she ever was, who never put money into social security. So she was really pissed off about that. And to expand on that a little bit, I do remember after she said this, that not too long after she sent the story to us, I read from the papers that that actually was true and there was somebody who was really complaining about that in Congress, I don't really remember my source, but I do remember that that was sort of corroborated, what she said. So that was her last job.

CC: And then we're definitely going to talk more about her experiences in camp in a bit, but just broadly, just the same question with your dad. How do you think the camp experience may have changed her or affected her life?

MM: I think that the camp life made her strong. Well, maybe actually started when they moved to Japan, but she used to be a frightened girl, apparently, very unsure of herself. But I think with all the experiences that went on in camp and what she had to... it was trial by fire, for sure. She learned a lot, she was a very independent, strong woman, and my dad was lucky to have her.

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