<Begin Segment 14>

BF: Well, before that, when you were younger, and you had, you had mentioned that you were working after school and on weekends. It's kinda hard, but to, to think of what you were going -- what you felt back then, but do you remember resenting it? You know feeling things like, oh look at my friends they're doing, they get to do...

TM: Yeah probably. But up and down Main Street there were a number of families like ours that had some kind of business. I remember one, one or two. One was even running a, maybe not the father, but the uncle was running a pool hall, so they were working. And a restaurant Main Shokudo, then there was the Yoshidas, who's son Richard was the same age. His family had a grocery store so they were working, too. So and Pat Abe's parents had a store on Dearborn. So maybe I resented it, and I'm sure we did sometime, but we also ended up playing or becoming friends with people that were in somewhat similar situations. So probably that was just normal way that we were. Yeah, in fact one of the friends, his father had a gas station on Twelfth Avenue, so he was there all the time helping. It wasn't unusual to have friends that were doing similar -- maybe they didn't put as much hours in, or maybe they did more, I don't know, but it was kind of the normal way for our group, my, my friends anyway.

BF: But do you think that's something more typical of your generation, than say, my generation or younger, this attitude of not complaining and --

TM: Yeah, I think so, I keep looking at my nieces and nephews and my children. Well, my nephews, I mean nieces anyway worked after school. But I, I didn't encourage my children. I didn't think they should, so there's a difference of opinion.

BF: A difference out of -- a different attitude...

TM: Attitude, yeah

BF: ...towards what kids should be doing?

TM: And the necessity is not quite there. I remember my wife saying in Hawaii, she came from a not too wealthy family, so she said she worked on weekends, flower shops or even hotels. In Hawaii that's about the only jobs that... so it was very common for her and her friends to have weekend jobs, or summer jobs. So maybe that's not quite so true, although I encourage my children to work during the summer anyway. Maybe not weekends, but during the summer. We all work Christmas time.

BF: Still?

TM: Yeah, well we used to.

BF: Right before New Years?

TM: Yeah. It's the busiest time, so...

BF: Yeah, 'cause I've read somewhere that the immigrants, families, particularly the Japanese, the businesses thrived prewar primarily because of this family factor. That, that they, that, that it seemed that one big difference between immigrant families and the American workers were that they, they had their wives working, they had their kids working, everyone was out in the field.

TM: Well general, make a general statement, most immigrants, regardless if they're from Europe or Asia, and probably the most visible to us are the recent Asian immigrants, but the parents and their children are working probably as long hours if not more than our parents did and we did, and that's especially people from Korea and some of the southeastern Asian countries, especially if their family ran businesses in, where they came from. I'm guessing that the parents are working long hours and their children are helping just as much as ours, our generation. Probably typical of most generations that come from a primarily "laissez faire" type of a country that they come from. Socialistic, maybe it's different, but people from especially Hong Kong, Taiwan, they come from a communi -- culture that is business and, especially Korea too. I'm guessing, and I don't know too many personally, but I'm guessing there's a lot of kids of parents, where they're the second, or even came over as young children, working very hard and long hours, I'm guessing in the family business, I'm guessing.

BF: But it's interesting, because, with, I guess, because you said somewhat there's less the need, you've, you've chosen to not, to not have your children work after school in the store.

TM: Well, and like I say, getting back, we did it because, well, because we, that was the way it was. But also a lot of our friends did it, so it was okay. But you look at your children, if their friends are not doing it you kinda hate to push them to do it.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.