<Begin Segment 3>

AR: Our project is mainly about New Mexico, so I don't want to linger too much on El Paso, but do you have any memories of growing up in El Paso that you want to share? Was there a big Japanese community there, or...

MM: We were, they were working in... they made friends there in El Paso because at that time, my father found a job further into Texas and went to work there for a while.

AR: As a cook still?

MM: Pardon?

AR: As a cook still?

MM: Yeah. And then not too long after that, he come back to El Paso. We all moved back to El Paso and that's where my godparents baptized me and the whole thing. You know what I mean? I wasn't baptized at that time and they did it at the... and I was already, you know, up there, you know.

AR: Do you have any memories of these godparents of yours that were Japanese?

MM: Kind of like in a dream. They were there, they owned a store there, and we lived there for maybe about a week or two when my father wanted to come on to Albuquerque. So we were there for just a short time. Then we came on to Albuquerque and he was working as a cook in a restaurant there on... what is that main street?

AR: Central? Central? Central?

MM: Central, yeah.

AR: Was it an Anglo establishment or a Mexican establishment or Japanese restaurant? Do you know?

MM: I'm not sure what they were.

AR: How old were you when you made that move?

MM: I must have been about thirteen or something like that.

AR: You were in school?

MM: No schooling until we come to Albuquerque.

AR: Oh.

MM: My mother used to teach us before that. I remember there was this big tree outside the house and there was maybe about six or eight kids that used to go up there and we all learned, all Mexican, Spanish or Mexican, but no English. She didn't know how to, you know, really use English then.

AR: I see.

MM: And so we moved to Albuquerque, and there's where I went to the Sacred Heart School there.

AR: Sacred Heart Catholic School?

MM: It was a Catholic School and I couldn't speak English or what, whatever, no. It just so happened there was this sister, Sister Juanita, that could speak Spanish. So she was the one who communicated with me and then I started to learn English there in Albuquerque. And by the time I got through, I guess I was doing all right, because we lived there. He opened up a restaurant there, on that railroad where the Santa Fe used to have the trains drove by. They changed trains.

AR: The shops and the round house --

MM: Yeah, right around there he had a restaurant. And then that's when the... what is the...

AR: Depression?

MM: Depression hits.

AR: What was the name of the restaurant? Do you remember?

MM: I can't remember. All I can remember is one day it was filled with people and then the next day it was just empty. Nothing, nothing.

AR: The Depression hit.

MM: So, it just hit it so bad and so...

AR: I'm kind of curious on this restaurant. Do you remember what kind of food they served?

MM: It was mainly Mexican food, because my mother was a good cook, and it was popular with the people around there. But it was mainly Mexican, yeah. And, of course, you know, whenever there was a lot of Japanese people that would come, why, he would fix what he knew, this chop suey or he used to fix this rice there that he would boil, and this little dried fish that they fixed some kind of a mixture with them. And I don't know what it was, but I liked it. [Laughs]

AR: So then it sounds like there was a pretty good size Japanese population in Albuquerque back in the early '30s.

MM: Japanese and...

AR: Working on the railroads and...

MM: All around there, but then all of a sudden...

AR: Depression.

MM: ...everything was gone. Everything was gone. Yeah. I mean, it was just like they emptied the... that I remember.

AR: Were you treated okay at that school, at the Sacred Heart School?

MM: Well, yes. I never made friends, because I couldn't, you know, communicate. And by the time we got through there, I was doing pretty good, though. I started picking up a lot of English. Then is when we moved over here to Gallup.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.