<Begin Segment 11>

AR: Did your father have any trouble during the war?

MM: No, he didn't. He stayed here for a while and then they all moved to... what is this place right here? Right across from El Paso? Anyway, they moved because my sister...

AR: Las Cruces or no?

MM: Right around there. I know they moved there, because my sister, Margaret, the youngest one that's here, graduated and she was named valedictorian or something, and they wouldn't let her here, they wouldn't let her get up there. No, they had to choose somebody else because of the Japanese blood. Yeah. And so, I mean, she went out there because she couldn't get a job here. The government, they had this, you know, you could go... the people here had these government jobs and offices and all that. They wouldn't accept her.

AR: They wouldn't hire her, huh?

MM: Yeah. So she went up to... it flew away from me. Silver City or...

AR: Okay. It could be Silver City or Las Cruces or...

MM: Yeah. Well, she went up there and then she went to work up there. But they accepted her there, but they weren't extra special, either. But she at least was working.

AR: So now, let me get this straight. She was going to Gallup High School in 1945?

MM: Yeah, around there.

AR: And she had the grades to be valedictorian and they wouldn't let her be, because she was half Japanese.

MM: Yeah, they didn't. They said that she got the, whatever it is, but they just didn't... they had to pick somebody else, they said.

AR: Now we looked at the yearbooks for the war years and we had a lot of students who were Japanese, like you mentioned the boy you dated. His brother ...

MM: Yeah.

AR: What was the name of the boy you dated that was Japanese? It started with a "T'' maybe?

MM: Who's that?

AR: Japanese American kid that you dated when you were younger? Shinto?

MM: Oh, Shibata. Well, they went to school here, yeah, Shibata.

AR: Anyway, Jack Shinto, I think it he was...

MM: Shintos, they also lived here.

AR: He was president of the senior class and president of the junior class and that was interesting to see that they...

MM: They generally were very smart, but they didn't have a chance.

AR: I see. But your father didn't get investigated by the FBI or anything like that?

MM: They come to the house to check him out, yeah. When the war broke out and all that. They did come and they checked the house.

AR: Because he was a language teacher, so that might have made him on a list, you know.

MM: Yeah. And right after this, when they moved out there and he was working as a cook, you know, and my sister got that job there and...

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.