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AR: Now how did he meet your mother?

MM: My mother, they also were running away from Pancho Villa, remember?

AR: Uh-huh.

MM: They had that big...

AR: Revolution?

MM: Yeah. And anybody that even owned a house, they considered rich. Well, my mother was an orphan and she had, with her godparents, they went ahead and they come across into El Paso illegally. So, and then she started working as a waitress in this restaurant where my father was as a cook. Now, like I tell you...

AR: So your mother was Mexican by birth?

MM: My mother was Mexican and my father was Japanese.

AR: What's your mother 's name?

MM: My mother's name was Maria Sanchez.

AR: Maria Sanchez, okay.

MM: Yeah.

AR: And what did her father... oh, but you say she was an orphan. So both her parents had been killed in the revolution?

MM: No. She was an orphan already. But during that, that war was going on, it was just, Pancho Villa was just against anybody that had property, had, you know, any kind of money or anything like that, he was getting rid of them and that's when her godparents and her, they come across from Mexico. She had been married to a soldier over there. And she would bring my half-brother across with her and... whatchamacallit? When she come, she had to work because, you know, she had that little boy with her and that's where she met my father, in a restaurant.

AR: Do you think that she was a widow when she came over?

MM: She was a widow at the time, yeah. She was a widow, because she said that she had been married to this Mexican soldier. He got killed over there, and then that's when she come across with the baby.

AR: A boy or a girl baby?

MM: It was a boy.

AR: So that's your older half-brother?

MM: Yeah.

AR: Okay. And then she came and she worked as a waitress in the restaurant and met your father.

MM: Yeah. They met... excuse me.

AR: Yes. Now did either one of them speak the other person's language?

MM: No. They don't know, that's how... it's such a mystery as to how they communicated. They managed, though. [Laughs] And like I said, he was working there and then he proposed to her, but I guess he must have had some other Japanese fellow or Spanish fellow, you know, communicate to him. Because she couldn't talk English or Japanese and he couldn't talk Mexican or English.

AR: I see.

MM: So that was a puzzle there and I never did find out how in the world he managed to propose to her and marry her. She really wanted to get out of the house, because her padrinos...

AR: Godparents?

MM: They were very mean.

AR: Oh.

MM: And she was going through a lot of heck, you know. So, I think she mainly wanted to get out from under his thumb.

AR: So we might be getting ahead of the story, but do you think your father was Catholic by that time, or was he still...

MM: No. He became Catholic here in Gallup.

AR: Oh, okay. Well, how many children in your family?

MM: There was my half-brother and then I was the oldest and then I had two sisters. One sister is still alive, the other one passed about ten years ago. And the other one lives herein Gallup, Margaret, the youngest one.

AR: I get it. Okay. So three daughters from that union between your father and mother.

MM: Yeah, yeah.

AR: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.