<Begin Segment 4>

AR: I know you said the Depression hit. So about what year do you think you came to Gallup?

MM: That's about... well, the Depression hit it bad out there.

AR: 1929, '30, '31?

MM: In 1932 or '33, something like that.

AR: Okay.

MM: Yeah.

AR: And your father came here for work and found work?

MM: He came before us. We stayed there in Albuquerque and he hitchhiked over here and then he went to Gramerco and there was a lot of Japanese there.

AR: That's the coal camp out there?

MM: Yeah. And so he got a job as a cook there.

AR: Oh, okay.

MM: So, and then he brought us. He had... there was this, they used to have a grocery store here, I forget their name. They sent the boy up there to Albuquerque to pick us up and bring us over here.

AR: Okay. Was it a Japanese friend of his that sent for the family?

MM: How's that?

AR: The store owners, were they Japanese, that sent for you?

MM: No. No, they were Anglos.

AR: Okay.

MM: Or more Slavish.

AR: Slavic?

MM: Yeah.

AR: Interesting. So you came, and for a while you lived out at Gamerco? Gammaco?

MM: How's that?

AR: When the family came to join your father, did you live out at Gammaco for a while?

MM: Gamerco.

AR: Gamerco?

MM: Uh-huh. Just long enough to find a place here and that's when they brought us here to the Santa Fe houses, where all the Japanese were living there.

AR: Okay. Now you've got to help me understand this, because nobody's told us about this. There was some housing for Japanese workers along the Santa Fe Railroad?

MM: Oh, there was a lot. There were a lot of Japanese working the Santa Fe here. Yeah. And most of them were, you know... well, they had their own business, some of them. But not anything big yet. Later on they started with restaurants and things like that.

AR: But at that time they were working as laborers in the rail yards?

MM: Just, yeah, whatever they could get. And for the Santa Fe, wherever they could get...

AR: And I think I saw in your other interview that you did, the article that they wrote, they mentioned it was called the Japanese colony or the Japanese camp?

MM: Well, you would say because there was nothing but Japanese there. I mean, we were the only ones that were half Japanese that lived there, because the other families that were, you know, half Mexican and half Japanese or anything like that, they lived outside of that. But we happened to, I guess because my father had that job, they rented him a house there.

[Interruption]

AR: So how long did you live in the Japanese camp?

MM: It might have been about a year or something like that. Then we rented a place close by.

AR: Okay. Moved out of the Japanese camp into town somewhere?

MM: Yeah. Well, I guess you could, because there was all Japanese there and I know my mother... well, my father was a cook and my mother was always a busybody, and so she'd go to these Japanese ladies wherever she could and if they wanted houses cleaned or if they wanted laundry, anything, she would iron and everything and so she'd make her side money that way.

AR: Oh. Now do you think she picked up some Japanese along the way, language, Japanese language along the way?

MM: I doubt it.

AR: Not too much?

MM: No. She picked up the English, though. She could talk broken like, but... well, I wouldn't say very broken, because you could make out what she was saying. My father, he would stutter, you know. He tried to talk to me and kind of stuttered and think about the word and then something.

AR: Those languages are pretty far apart, Japanese and English.

MM: Yeah.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.