<Begin Segment 5>

AR: So, from your memories and recollections, was there a pretty good mix of people, in other words, men and women and children living in the Japanese community?

MM: Yes. But like I tell you, they didn't, they didn't like us very much.

AR: Oh. Because of the Hispanic?

MM: You want to hear that one?

AR: Go ahead.

MM: No, the thing was that there was several families that were Japanese and Americans, and my father was a teacher in the school. And the thing was at five o'clock, everybody went to Japanese school after we got out of the other schools. And so we went there and everybody went there all the time and I went there and they had all the Japanese Americans or Mexicans separated from the Japanese and I didn't like it. And I was the only one that... I was going to Sacred Heart School at that time. I'd stay 'til five or six o'clock, 'til they were all in school, and then I'd go home, but I just wasn't going to be separated, I guess. I don't know, something in me, anyway. But they got after my father because I missed school and this and that, but he couldn't make me go for nothing, you know? And I'd just run away and stay in that Sacred Heart School 'til...

AR: Now the school that you went to in Albuquerque was Sacred Heart and the school here was Sacred Heart, too?

MM: It was a Catholic School, yeah, Sacred Heart.

AR: Okay. So you went back into Catholic School when you were here?

MM: Yeah.

AR: And you're saying the Japanese, pure Japanese students, all Japanese, they didn't treat you very well?

MM: Separated from, yeah.

AR: From the ones...

MM: Oh, after the war, watch it. They just couldn't do enough for you. Oh, they just, "Toki," and this and that and I says, "Since when? They never wanted me before."

AR: Were there other kids that were of mixed heritage?

MM: Yeah, yeah, but they didn't mind it. I guess. My sister didn't mind it. She used to go. She'd go to school and all and I told them, "No way. I'm not going to be..."

AR: Segregated, huh?

MM: I don't know. I guess something.

AR: And your dad was the teacher of the Japanese language school?

MM: Yeah. But see, he was married to a Mexican woman, so he didn't have much say so.

AR: But he was a teacher?

MM: Because he used to be a teacher in Japan.

AR: Oh, did he?

MM: Uh-huh, yeah.

AR: Okay. So he had some college education or something?

MM: I really don't know how much education he had, but he was the only boy and I know they educated... they did try to educate him as much as possible and then the war broke out and he was sent into...

AR: To fight?

MM: Yeah and that's when he was wounded.

AR: Do you think your mom had a hard time living in the Japanese community, too, being Spanish, being Mexican?

MM: No. My mother was, she could get along with anybody. She was that kind of a person. She just could make you think you were the best there was, you know. And so, no, they liked her well, but they wouldn't accept her with him. You used to have to go... this was the way it was. They had this big swimming pool. Everybody, everybody there in those Japanese buildings there that lived there in the camp there. I say "camp," I don't know if it was. But Saturdays the men, the women, the children, they'd go and take a bath together, all of them. And like I said, I went one time and I says, "To heck with them." But every Saturday, all of them would go in there and they, the men would be over here, the women here and the kids, but they'd all go in.

AR: The bathhouse?

MM: I don't know. I guess there's something in me that was different, something. Because I acted... I don't know how I acted. I mean, I just wasn't about to be treated like a cow, pushed in there.

AR: Okay. All right.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.