<Begin Segment 7>

FK: So how did you get from Chicago to New York?

SM: You mean transportation?

FK: Well, how did you end up in New York?

SM: Oh, I just sort of, you know, by then I took a physical, and they made me 4-F because of my bad knee. So I didn't have to worry about being drafted or anything. So I took off for New York. I thought it might be kind of a little more interesting place than Chicago. So I was there about three, four years off and on. Anyway, I lived in a little hotel there, right in the corner of Central Park, place called Columbus Circle. It's got a big statue of Columbus there, anyway. And this kind of a bellhop there in a hotel. He was a Japanese guy. He's a kind of interesting story, too. He said he came from, he came up to New York from Peru. He said his old family sent him to Peru to avoid the Japanese conscription for the army, he ended up in Peru there, and kind of a, been in the service. Kind of a domestic feel all his life, I guess. One time he was a personal valet for a guy name Gillette, who was a famous Broadway star there, used to play Sherlock Holmes on the Broadway stage. And then he was some domestic there in New Jersey.

FK: So what did you do while you were in New York?

SM: I was in the silkscreen over there. Kind of for movies, movie houses, and print signs on cloth. I think advertising different movies, all kinds of cloth signs like put around the marquee, air conditioned, you know, and make those signs.

FK: Well, how did you end up doing that? Did you have to learn how to do that, or you did that before?

SM: There's nothing much to it. Anyway, this shop is on Eleventh Avenue, right along the old Hudson River. It was kind of interesting. You used to see this old Queen Mary come in with about 14,000 troops on there. You could kind of stand up on the table and look out the window. It was just going right by real close. The Cunard Dock wasn't too far from where the shop was. Anyway, we used to make all these signs for movie houses, big banners. They had had about three women there, and they'd sew all these letters on these big banners.

FK: How did you keep track of the rest of your family while you were traveling around here?

SM: [Laughs] Yeah, I used to send letters once in a while. Everybody was kind of working around the farms around Idaho. Tats, he finally came out to Chicago, too. As soon as I left for New York, he took that job in that machine shop there. [Laughs] He came out with Yosh Katayama first. They went to Iowa, and they were gonna enroll in this chick sexing school there in Iowa. Anyway, my brother didn't go for that job, he didn't like all the little feathers flying all over the place. It was bad for your lungs or something. So, you know, Yosh, he became one of these guys.

FK: So when you found out that the war was over, what did you decide to do?

SM: I thought about going back. I kind of, I thought I'd better wait around and see how things are back there. I came back a couple of times during the war. Not during the war, but after the war.

FK: So by that time, were your brothers back on the farm then? Or was it just your mom?

SM: Yeah, they were both around. Well, the oldest brother, he got into that little beverage shop, up there by Jackson there.

FK: That was, was that Mort?

SM: Yeah. They were, before that, I think they were both making fishing rods down there in the old cannery down there. I don't know if you remember old Casey Hendricks there, he was a guy that promoted that thing there. Then Tats learned, he went to school and learned welding. Well, I think we got into that olympic berries first, I guess. That was a pretty poor thing to grow, too. No crop whatsoever. Being a hybrid, thing was really weak. When you got a good cold spell, it would destroy those canes.

FK: So how did you get the deal with Frederick & Nelson?

SM: Huh?

FK: How did you get the deal with Frederick & Nelson for olympics?

SM: Oh, I think there was a woman. Yeah, there was a woman in Kingston who was making jam for Frederick & Nelson, and that's how we got the connection. Anyway, she quit. By the way, she was a relative of this Richard Gordon, the astronaut, that guy that Kingston grade school is named after. Anyway, that's how we got the connection with Frederick & Nelson.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.