<Begin Segment 5>

LH: And so I'm trying the think of the time before the war and what was your family situation right before any outbreak of war? What was your family situation financially, etc.?

MN: I think for an immigrant family in that particular society at that time, we were pretty well off. We were not only well off financially, I think prestigious-wise because people wanted their sons to go to get a job with my father in the Alaska cannery. They would do little favors. We'd get little presents from people and so... and my father, he always liked people. He was always good with the stories, he was good with jokes, he loved to sing and so, I think that I remember life being kind of happy. In fact, and I hear stories about that time things were just going real well. Before that, before my father got settled, he was hard working, had to struggle to get, so he was kind of proud to have achieved this. I remember once he was telling a story where he was working as a waiter at the University Club, I think it was. And I guess some of the people came in, they were really obnoxious and they wouldn't leave and they were drinking until -- and so I guess what the guys would do is every time they'd bring out some dish for them, they would spit in it [Laughs] as a sign of protest. And I thought that was gross at the time, but then way later in my life I watched that movie Roots, and exactly the same thing. This lady says, "Go get me some water," and the woman is betrayed and she does not know how to express her anger so she spits in the water before she gives it to, I'm going hmm... sometimes you don't have a legitimate ways of protesting. You have to find some other ways of doing it, but before the war, yeah, my father had a good job with a cannery, and he was gone most of the summer so we had to survive. My mom had to survive, but she had a good mechanism. Her brother was around, and...

LH: Can I ask you about, you made a comment about your uncle being maybe a Mafia-type person. Can you explain why you think that?

MN: I don't know. I think that -- I'm not really a history bug, but there was people who exploited their own folks and kind of had a strong arm protection kind of a organization going, and it seems like there were more than one faction of it. And I think they were involved in gambling and protection and things that were not really legitimate. I don't know if prostitution was part of it or not, but...

LH: So what makes you think your uncle might have been part of this?

MN: Just the stories I hear, this little hush, little things and the fact that he was so dapper, the fact that he had money. I don't know. I get the feeling that it was -- well, I do know that being on the other side of law was not that big of a deal. The law did not really represent -- my father, during prohibition, was involved in bootlegging. My mother hates those stories to be told, but my dad used to kind of laugh at those stories and talk about one time he was in the front office where, and then the customers come in and buy the booze, okay? And he says the policeman came in so he yells real loud to people in the back, "Hey, they're here. They're here," and he says, "Kitazou, kitazou." And they, the people in the back thought they meant customers rather than police so they comes out with two different bottles, and they got caught red-handed. So apparently he spent some -- I was with papa in the I.D. once and he says, "This used to be the jail house. I was jailed here once," he says. "When I got out," he said, "Man, I wanted some gohan." And he says, "I went to the closest Japanese restaurant and sat down there and ate up." So he was not really ashamed of his stories. My mom was, "Shush." [Laughs]

LH: So he could do some of these activities and then also he would go up summers and be the foreman at the Alaska cannery?

MN: No. I think these were all kind of getting established to become the foreman. By the time he got married and became the foreman, I think he was pretty straight. He was pretty legitimate.

LH: So...

MN: War came along and kind of broke it all up.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.