<Begin Segment 3>

MU: Now, it's interesting that your father emphasized education and your mother emphasized the cultural aspects. You had a pretty good education right there at home. But what kind of schooling did you do in San Francisco?

MM: In San Francisco, I went to City College and Business College, and in Japan I went to Kumahira Typist Yoseisho, Japanese typing. And of course, the reason why we went to Japan -- the whole family, mind you -- was so that my father's brothers who were all in the medical field, my father wanted them to convince my brother, Masami, the eldest, to follow my father's footstep and become a medical doctor, which my brother wasn't at all interested in. And, of course, he had finished UC Berkeley and one day he told me -- he's in this zoology class. He says, "You know, I don't even wanna vivisection frogs." [Laughs] So I knew that was not his field. Definitely not.

MU: Okay. Now, how long did you stay in Japan?

MM: So, myself, I stayed about ten months. (As for) my brother Masami, the oldest; my uncles would not let him leave Japan.

MU: I see.

MM: In fact, before we left -- and the ulterior motive was so that the uncles could convince him that he should pursue the medical field, my brother said, "You people go, and I'll mind the house." But that wasn't to be. So, that is the reason why he had no choice but to remain there, and so the only thing he could do was to take an entrance exam to one of the colleges. And one college was Hitotsubashi, which was supposed to be real good, but his transcript, school transcript from the University of California did not arrive in time. So the next one was Waseda University and for some reason, he passed the entrance exam, the regular entrance exam, and was able to enter Waseda University.

MU: Wonderful. How about you, how about you? Did you go to school?

MM: Well, my intentions were to go there and be admitted to Josen. Josen --

MU: Girls' school, is it?

MM: That's women's college and the first thing that my uncles told me was, "You've had enough education. Kekkon ni sawaru." You know what I mean. [Laughs]

MU: Well, for our benefit, kekkon ni sawaru -- that's saying that it might interfere with your marriage.

MM: Marriage. Exactly.

MU: The potential? So, how much education did you get in Japan?

MM: So, this is what happened. Naturally I couldn't go against their wishes. So what I did, what they offered was, "Well, why don't you take ocha, ohana," and one of my relatives could teach shamisen. See, I had okoto, a little bit of that. So I felt, "Oh, that's great, I'll learn shamisen." But during those days, sort of wartime in Japan, anyhow, I couldn't practice where I could be heard. So, I went into the kura to practice. And this was in Koi, at my mother's place.

MU: This is all in Hiroshima?

MM: This is in Hiroshima. So I practiced my shamisen in the kura. [Laughs] How about that?

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.