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MN: Let me ask you, going back to how you were making money, you mentioned you had rabbits. Did you make money selling rabbits?

MO: No, they were our pets. Because we had these rabbits that were our pets, and then one day the dog next door, couple of doors away, came and killed one of our rabbits. Although we had them in hutches, for some reason a rabbit got killed. And in exchange for that, they gave us one of their dogs, a puppy. They were wire haired terriers, and we had one we called Ginger. Ginger, Crackers, and Pepper. I think Crackers was the mother. Anyway, that became our dog. Not a great dog, but he was our dog.

MN: So you didn't sell the rabbits, or you didn't eat the rabbits either?

MO: Well, we ate rabbits, but the only time we ate rabbits was, the mailman was Mr. Woolham, raised rabbits. And if I went up to help him kill and skin them -- he would kill them, but I would skin them -- then I would get a couple of rabbits to take home. And we didn't think anything of it; it was food. Today, people would consider that inhumane, but I assume people who would consider eating meat inhumane are all vegetarians. I hope they are. Because all those animals had to be killed that you're eating.

MN: Well, since we're talking about food, can you share with us what kind of food your mother made at home?

MO: Well, it's kind of hard to say, because my mother was, she had to work all the time. And so I don't think she ever became a really good cook. I remember meals where -- we always had rice, and the treat with rice was when you got down to the bottom of the part, she would pour tea in there, the koge part, and then you had chazuke with this really tasty rice. She would make stew, we'd always have it over rice, that was good. She would make okazu, but that wasn't... it was okay. [Laughs] I remember once in a while we would have Campbell's beef soup, and she'd heat up the rice in a bowl and just pour that over it, and that was pretty good. I always thought that was good, but you're a kid; you don't know anything differently.

MN: How often did you eat meat at that time?

MO: We had a fish man come around, so we had fish once a week at least. You know, I don't remember how much meat we ate. I know we ate a lot of hamburger, 'cause that was really cheap in those days. But I don't recall how much meat we ate. I don't recall eating a lot of chicken because chickens were expensive. Because they weren't cut up, you bought the whole chicken.

MN: So you didn't keep chickens on your own and then kill your own chicken?

MO: No, no. All we had were the rabbits, and they were our pets.

MN: And then you know when the fish peddler came around, did he also sell, like, tofu and konnyaku?

MO: I don't remember, because I never went out there. I know we had tofu, and I presume that's where we got it, but I don't recall.

MN: Now you were sharing with us a little earlier about how you were earning money. What did you do with the money?

MO: Well, if you went to the Saturday matinee -- because you got to remember, in the summertime, we didn't go to Japanese school -- if you went to the Saturday matinee, you got two movies, a cartoon, a newsreel, and a serial, sort of corny serial, Flash Gordon, things like that. And the movie was ten cents. And then I had fifteen cents leftover, instead of buying stuff in the movie, there was a little restaurant called Wimpy's about a block from the theater. You can go in there and get a hamburger and a Coke for fifteen cents. Of course, we didn't tip anyone; we were little kids. And I think one of the things that bothered me a lot was, I guess it might have been 1940 or 1941, they put a tax on movies, so you had to pay eleven cents. That really screwed up my budget. [Laughs] Yeah, eleven cents. Because even when we went to church, we just put pennies in the offering, 'cause we didn't have money. A nickel was a lot of money to put in the offering.

MN: And then you mentioned that your parents were working at this produce stand. When you were growing up, did you have to go and help out there?

MO: No, no. Occasionally we would walk to the one in Glendale, it was about a mile and a half away. You'd walk right along San Fernando Road. What I remember is that we always walked by Bob's Big Boy. There was one right there in Burbank, and how good it would smell. We could never afford to buy one of those. I think that was the second one that was built. I think the first one started in Glendale. Anyway, it was right there on San Fernando, Bob's Big Boy, and it was there even until maybe the 1950s or '60s. But it wasn't the famous one that's in Toluca Lake where all the cars go. And Jay Leno goes there, shows off his fancy car. No, no, this was not a drive-in, it was a walk-up.

MN: And then is this the one that you mentioned there was the airport across the ways?

MO: Yeah. My father worked at Grand Central Market. There was an airport across the street, it was called Grand Central Air Terminal. And at that time it was one of the main terminals in California. You got to remember, they were little planes, prop driven, flying was hazardous. There was no LAX. They had a field down near Imperial Highway, close to where Hawthorne is now, there was an airfield there. And then there was one in a place called Walteria, which is now Torrance. But the -- oh, and then there was a little private airfield in Pacoima called White's Aeropark, I think it was called. But it was mostly private planes.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.