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BF: Well, let's, let's talk some more about some of the other people that have influenced your thinking, and particularly this, this interest in community service, people like Reverend Andrews, or you mentioned Wing Luke. In what ways did, did they influence you or impress you?

TM: Well, I don't think they influenced or impressed me in terms of telling me that I should go out and do community service or things. Their, they impressed me by their integrity and their willingness to, I don't know, speak out and -- well, maybe not speak out, but do things that they felt was right for the future. Those are the things I've gathered that -- you talk about Wing Luke. When he was a city councilperson, we were all, as fellow Asians, we were very, very proud of him. He used to walk up and down Main Street, King Street, Jackson Street, come into these businesses like ours and just say, "Hey, what's happening?" So if it's a hot day, we're eating ice cream or something, so we'll hand him over ice cream or a bottle of soda pop. And he would always leave money, which really was impressive. So that's, those are the influence, I think, that I value. So there's people of so-called making, position of authority, but have the integrity to be willing to listen to you, but that type of integrity. And I could say the same thing about Reverend Andrews. He -- when you go camping with him, I was in fact, camping with him on one wet evening, and we had this lean-to. And when some Girl Scouts came up, he says, "Let's move. The girls can have this." I thought that was very unreasonable, but that's the kind of things that influence you, I think. As a gentleman, as a society there are certain, proper etiquettes, and things that just becomes a natural, and that's what they did. Not even thinking about, this is what's expected of us, and so we do it. That's, those are things that I value, I guess.

BF: And so you were involved with the Scouts, and Reverend Andrews was a scoutmaster at the time?

TM: Uh-huh.

BF: Was that -- were you involved with Scouts for a long period of time?

TM: Probably longer than most. About the time I was coming on, I forgot the term, like Tenderfoot, reduced age was from ten or thirteen down to eleven or something. I got, got there about when I was ten or eleven -- I mean ten, eleven, twelve or something because I was kind of hanging around with my older brothers. They were scouts. But I kind of hung around. Like I told you, Reverend Andrew's son, Brooks, was the same age, so there was two or three of us that kind of was the next generation. But we followed around, but we kind of stuck around, kind of tagged along for a while. And before we knew it, we were the, kind of the older leadership group. So I stuck through it almost through college in one way or another. Because I -- here again, I probably, that was, I'm thinking about it right now, that's probably the first time I kind of got involved with assisting, leadership position or something like that. And, but lot of the younger generation were either my kid brother's age or kid brothers of friends or something like that. So you just felt obligated to try to do whatever was right.

BF: So this was an all-Nikkei troop?

TM: No, it was probably primarily Nikkei. There was a few like Brooks Andrews was hakujin. But there was a few others, but, but primarily Nikkei because it was attachment, Japanese Baptist Church.

BF: Right, right.

TM: And as a Baptist Church-attached organization, we helped with various functions in the church like bazaars or lunches or whatever they had. Not a lot, but to stay, stay involved. But I didn't attend church or so-called become a member of the church as such.

BF: There's a part of the troop. What about, I was thinking maybe your, your mother might have influenced your involvement in the community because it sounds like from your descriptions in our first interview that she was always sort of serving an extended family.

TM: Yeah. She did a wonderful job in setting up a atmosphere where people, all people, I mean our friends, my friends, my brother's friends and businesspeople and my father's friends were comfortable coming together. So maybe there was no serious formal discussion, but -- and that maybe relates back to traveling. You just start to relate to people from different backgrounds, and I've enjoyed that. But my mother has to be appreciated for allowing that type of atmosphere to happen.

BF: Because she was -- a lot of people in her generation were much more shy, especially around non-Japanese.

TM: Well, yeah. That's -- I never thought of it that way. But she was not untypical, and that gracious host. They were just good hosts. But she came from a family that the father, her father and my grandfather were businesspeople traveled back and forth from Japan frequently. And she was raised in Japan. I'm guessing at some, probably pretty good high school. She traveled. She played the koto. So she did some of the finer things. And she had a house maid, I know, because my grandfather, when my real grandfather, my, passed away, my grandfather married the, I guess they call jochuusan, maid, I guess? And she was a wonderful lady. When I first went to Japan I got to meet her. She passed away a few years after that, but what was a wonderful person she was. So my mother was exposed to more, I don't know how to say, life that's attuned to maybe middle-class, business, travel, and things like that. She's traveled Europe on cruises, and she's been a lot of places.

BF: Wow. That seems sort of unusual.

TM: She was kind of funny, and sometimes she would say, watching TV, not often, but once in a while, "Oh, there's Paris -- I was there. There's London -- I was there. There's Panama Canal -- I was there." I says, "Wow." [Laughs]

BF: That's great.

TM: She's taken, I don't know about my kids. I guess even my kids, but she's taken her grandchildren to New York, to Japan.

BF: Wow.

TM: And California, frequently.

BF: Most women I know who are in your mother's generation go to Reno, and that's about it. [Laughs]

TM: I don't think she, my mother ever went to Reno. But the point is, I remember she took my daughter and my niece to Japan one early spring. And it snowed or something, and she practically had to -- you get on those trains, if you've been there. And if you don't, no seat, you just stand, and they said she stood up for two, three hours and let the kids sit down and things like that. That's what my daughter says. But anyway, the point is, she's traveled herself. And whenever possible she's taken her grandchildren or -- yeah, my, her grandchildren to various places.

BF: Adventurous.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.