<Begin Segment 15>

AR: All right. Well, when did you finally retire from all that waitressing?

MM: I was eighty-five years old. I mean, I meant to retire at sixty-five, because my husband retired at sixty-five. And then Mr. Ranch tried to get somebody to replace me.

AR: Mr. who?

MM: Mr. Ranch, Earl Ranch.

AR: Okay.

MM: He was the owner of the Ranch Kitchen.

AR: I see.

MM: And he brought several, you know, that he tried out and somehow or the other, it didn't work out, you know? And then finally he got this man, John. Anyway, he showed that he was going, and so they wanted me to stay. He come in, I don't know when it was, and they says, "You stay here and work 'til July and then you can retire." And then I saw that he was going to have trouble with the employees, because they'd been with me all the way through and they'll come to me instead of him. They come to me, you know. And I says, "That's not going to work." So, I went up to him and says, "Sunday is going to be my last day." And he says, "Well why?" you know. And John was the one that said, "I can use you." I says, "No." I says, "You might as well cut it off here. The kids have to get used to you." And he says, "Well, why don't you just come and work Saturdays and Sundays?" And I says, "I've worked Saturdays and Sundays all my life." So I said, "No, no more." And I didn't ever go back to work.

AR: So you were like the manager, the floor manager of the whole restaurant?

MM: General manager, because I had the shop. I had the dining room, the main rooms, I had all of it. Well, yeah. Mr. Ranch thought enough, like I tell you. He took off on his vacation abroad. He and his wife were there for, I think it was over a month and we were building the new Ranch Kitchen and I was the one who stood up there and supervised. And what do I know about buildings? I just stood up there, I timed them in and timed them out. Like I told Mr. Ranch, that's as much, that's what I need. So, anyway, he made, I don't know, all kinds of stuff on me that I didn't. But he was a good boss.

AR: He was.

MM: He was a good boss.

AR: Treated you well?

MM: Very fair, yeah. That's the reason I'm so at ease now, because he took very good care of me when I retired.

AR: Well, good. All right.

MM: So, I don't know. Anyway...

AR: Well, what have you been doing since your retirement? What do you like to do?

MM: Sit down. No. At the beginning, me and my husband, we'd go all over. We get on the -- we had a little truck -- go all over New Mexico. Go up there in the hills and build a fire and cook up there by right outside of Santa Fe and all those places.

AR: Uh-huh. Camping out?

MM: Yeah. We'd go all around there and oh, it was nice. We just, if we wanted to go, we just went. Afterwards, he got sick and I had his bed right here. They wanted me to take him up there to the, you know, where they have this old folks...

AR: Senior center?

MM: I told them no. He took care of me, I'll take care of him. So his bed was right here and this is where he passed away. And that couch was my bed on this other side and I took everything else out.

AR: How old was your husband when he passed away? How old was he?

MM: Louie was eighty-five.

AR: A good long life.

MM: Yeah, he was eighty-five. No, we had a good life and I mean to tell you, you know, he's strict, but in a way that it was good not only for the children, but for myself. Because we didn't have no, nobody to really, you know, tell you, "You got to do this, you got to do that." You know, just go ahead and have a good time. Don't worry, not with him, you know. So, we have a lot to thank him for, even if he was strict. And the kids, they loved him. They just loved him.

AR: Well, let me see. I've pretty much asked most of my questions here, let me look at this and see.

MM: I didn't think I could talk so much.

AR: Well, one thing I like to ask people when I interview them is... well, let me ask you this. As part of the project that we're doing, we are going to be developing a website on Japanese Americans in World War II, and we're going to be developing some historic markers and things. From your perspective, is that important for people to remember the story of Japanese Americans in New Mexico?

MM: Well, I think history should be remembered. I mean, one of these days, there won't be anything like that.

AR: Are there any parts of that story that really need to be emphasized? Like I think it's important that there were interracial families of Hispanic, Mexican intermarriage that can't be forgotten in this story, huh?

MM: Yeah.

AR: Is there anything else that you think is really important about your father's contributions to New Mexico history, for instance, or your families' contributions that are important?

MM: Well, they didn't have the freedom that they do now. Maybe it could have done more at the time if they would have had that freedom.

AR: There was a time when you couldn't hold land in New Mexico if you were Japanese. Did you know that?

MM: Oh, yeah.

AR: Yeah. I wonder if your father ever owned any land? Maybe he put it in his wife's name.

MM: No. My father, before they moved out there to Las Cruces, whatever, he's the one that helped knock all the plaster down when they brought the house over here. And then they moved out there. But he was the one that helped as much as he could here. So...

AR: All right. Is there anything I forgot to ask you about your life, that we want to get down on the record?

MM: I think I've told you more than what you've asked me. [Laughs] No, I think you got everything pretty well covered.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.