<Begin Segment 17>

BF: Well, I, I want to talk a little bit more too about the earlier years, when you're, when you're still attending school. It's, let's see, we're probably now in the '50s, right? When you were attending, let's say like Bailey Gatzert, you brought up Bailey Gatzert. And you said that it had a large Nikkei population.

TM: That was 1945, or 6 when Bailey Gatzert, because I was a third grade.

BF: Oh, okay, so still really young. What sort of interaction was it, so this is very postwar, very close to the war's end. What kind of interaction was there between this, this group of, of Nikkei and the non-Nikkei students there? Was it pretty comfortable, or was it uncomfortable?

TM: Well, you know, I've been involved with our high school reunion, and part of the committee, and I've been involved in our class, we have one reunion every five years, which is unusual.

BF: Yeah.

TM: But the point is, two or three of the committee members are kids that I got to know when we were third grade, so they were from Terrace. So, in some respect we were not uncomfortable, because they were very poor. And they were living in subsidized housing. And we were maybe culturally a little richer, but economically, we were probably, the same boat. So there's two or three ladies that meet each other in third grade. So the point I'm making is we didn't stick together as close friends, but we stayed in touch all these years. When you think about it, it's fifty years now, forty-five, fifty years.

BF: Yeah.

TM: So there were friends and there were situations where it was comfortable, and that was probably more from the economics of it. They didn't have money and we didn't have money, so we kind of had to stick together. But having said that, as I told you, most of the friends that I -- new friends like, that made after the world, you know, coming back from Tule Lake, were people that were either neighbors of where we lived, or neighbors of businesses. So you tend to, we ended up with friends with people that had to help their families. But when it came to school events or sometimes like Halloween parties or something like that, we went to the non-Nikkei hangouts and some of those friends we have. But having said that, I remember fighting over being called a "Jap", and probably it wasn't philosophically as offensive as, we just probably didn't like the guy and he just called you a name, it could have been any kind of name and you probably woulda fought anyway. But I remember, we probably had our, I wouldn't say typical, but had our differences with people of different colors, but that might have been not cultural so much as just the nature of growing up I guess maybe.

BF: Now the high school you went to had a smaller number of Nikkei. Right?

TM: Well in percentage, because --

BF: Percentage, right.

TM: Bailey Gatzert, maybe, here again I'll guess, three, four hundred students, junior high might've had seven, eight hundred and high school had twelve hundred or something like that. So the Nikkei didn't increase too much, so you're getting a small number into a larger and larger pool. So I'm guessing, by the time we got to high school, our class, if there were thirty, half of them came from Bailey Gatzert, and the other half came from other schools.

BF: And you mentioned that you have stayed in contact with some of these people since grade school.

TM: Yeah. Those were the non-Nikkei friends. But the Nikkei friends we have stayed in touch, too. Both just as pure friends, but also as we do this class reunion every five or ten years. You just naturally stay in touch too.

BF: Well what do you think, do you think there's anything unique about either that time period, or that school, or that mix of people, that accounts for the, the length of time you've stayed friends? I mean, why the five, every five years as opposed to you know, most people it's every twenty years or whatever?

TM: Yeah. We were fortunate. We had a couple of "spark plugs" in high school. And one lady, Jane, actually she passed away about a year ago, but she was just well liked by everybody, so she kept us together. But getting back, I think it was, I don't know, maybe it's not unusual. If I lived in middle town USA, I would've had these friends from kindergarten. Maybe it would've -- I don't know. And, but here again, these friends that I'm telling you about that grew up together from third grade on, we kind of lost contact after, at least college, but this reunion kind of brought us together and we've, we now meet because of that from time to time.

BF: Well, I ask in part because I've talked to some of your close friends and one of the things that came up was the fact that, even though your circumstances have changed to the point where, well for instance, you've had dinner with President Clinton, and that you travel extensively on your business, but you still hang out with some of the same sort of old Nikkei gang, and play poker, and sort of do all that. What, what I guess do you find that you get from those friends, that have sort of kept you...

TM: Gee, I never --

BF: ...a part of that?

TM: I guess it's a -- I think that might be something my father, as I was telling you, that old relations, and relatives relations are very important. And maybe that comes from that. And also, maybe I've traveled a lot and did a lot of things, but the family has always been there, the core. And so maybe these people are part of the extended family. I don't know, I really haven't given it much thought. But it's partly an obligation I have, I feel maybe. And then, you know, you know who they are, and like I said, you've known them for thirty, forty, fifty years and there's a level of comfort. And I don't know, I just, I haven't really given it much thought. But I try to make every effort to stay in touch with the family, and extended family friends, and people I've known for a long time.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.