<Begin Segment 2>

MU: The question is, what ken did your folks come from?

MM: My folks came from Hiroshima-ken. My mother from Koi-machi in Hiroshima and my father was from Asa-gun, Yasumura, Kamiyasu.

MU: In Hiroshima-ken?

MM: That's right, they're both Hiroshima-ken and father came from -- there's some question about what generation -- either the thirteenth or fifteenth generation of doctors.

MU: Well, I'm very curious about your father. What else do you remember about your father?

MM: Father was a rather strict person, of the old school. He was one that had attended normal school. I assume then that he did some teaching but he ended up at Jikei Igakko, medical college in Tokyo where he studied. But around Christmas, 1905 I believe, he immigrated to the States by Hawaii, and so one thing I do recall him saying is that the following year -- I guess the year of the earthquake -- he was aboard a vessel going to Alaska. He was recruited as a doctor, and so when he arrived in Seattle, he asked permission to get off the ship to get additional medication. And that is when he found out there was this big earthquake and fire in San Francisco. Of course, he worried about his medical books and pharmaceutical supplies that he had back home in San Francisco. But any rate, when he came back to San Francisco and he cried about his books being destroyed, his friends laughed at him. [Laughs] But in that way he was able to survive the earthquake.

MU: Lucky to be alive.

MM: He was really lucky to be alive.

MU: Now apparently he was a well-educated man.

MM: He was. And in fact, medicine was his love, actually. When he had a major operation around the time that the MIS Language School was moved to Monterey, I stopped by in San Francisco at the hospital that he was hospitalized at so that I could show him his first grandchild. He was given about five years to live and he broke all medical records, and he lived to be ninety. But he knew, it seemed as though he knew that he was ready about go to about age ninety, but he was one that could self-diagnose himself, and he was one that could quote out of the medical book -- quote mind you, really surprising. But at age ninety, when I went down to San Francisco, on this desk was his medical book with a marker in it. So I knew he was still keeping up with medicine.

MU: That's wonderful.

MM: So, I wished I had half of his brains.

MU: Okay, now, how was he as a father? Did he give you much advice?

MM: Well, he was really interested in our education as most other Issei pioneers were. And so he was very good at calligraphy, Japanese calligraphy, that is. And so when I was attending special classes on Saturdays he would help me, and I really appreciated this. But he was really interested in education, so all of us tried so hard to get good grades. I think most of us did.

MU: And was your mother also interested in you children...

MM: The cultural side. And so she gave me an opportunity to learn okoto, ocha, osaho and things like that, which I really appreciated.

MU: She was a quite cultured lady, then. She must have come from a pretty nice family in...

MM: They both came from good family. Of course, Father came from wealth. And I could tell you when I went to Japan in 1938, just before the war, we stayed for ten months. We went to see his yashiki, and of course, the big house was demolished, my grandfather had a huge mansion if you can call it that, in which there was a three-story kura.

MU: Storage.

MM: Storage, and anyone with wealth had a large kura, I understand. And so a bunch of us got together and went into the kura to look for the sword that my grandfather owned. Of course, that was gone. And all we saw was newspaper from way back when that was pasted on the walls, so that was a lost cause. [Laughs]

MU: About what year was that?

MM: That was -- see, we went in November of '38, so it could have been 1939, somewhere in there.

MU: Just prior to Pearl Harbor.

MM: Just prior to Pearl Harbor.

MU: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.