<Begin Segment 7>

AR: Did you go to Gallup High School?

MM: I'll tell you what happened here. I was in eleventh grade, and I used to work before I went up there and later when I get out. Well, I was late to mass, you know, so the Sister told me, "Mary," because they called me Mary, they didn't use my Japanese name. "Mary, you come late, that door's going to be closed." I couldn't help but be late, because I get out of work and I'd rush over there and it was closed. So they closed the door on me and that was the last day I went to school. I just didn't go back anymore and I went and I asked for steady work there at the Okay Cafe and I used to work as little as possible. But I used to manage to get some money there.

AR: Would that have been the Eagle Cafe by that time? Eagle Cafe?

MM: No. Later on I went to work at the Eagle Cafe. But it was Tairas, I think, they had it. Yeah.

AR: You never went to Gallup High School then, huh?

MM: No.

AR: Okay.

MM: I went for a half a year, but I didn't like it and I went back to Cathedral and then I quit. [Laughs]

AR: What didn't you like about Gallup High?

MM: I was so used to the Sisters and all of that, I guess, I don't know. And they, like anybody else, they kind of pushed you aside because you were Japanese.

[Interruption]

AR: How were your bosses at the cafes? Were they pretty good people?

MM: They were good with me. Yeah, they were good with me, because I tried to be a good worker and I was. I mean, I got so that the customers really appreciated me, you know. When I went into the Eagle Cafe, those waitresses there, also, they'd stand up there by themselves and there's Mary all by herself over here. I was used to that. I mean, I was so used to that and I guess later on, it didn't bother anymore. But all of those people, they just used to even come and try to be nice with me and talk with me. Bea Rocky, she was the one that pushed me away and a friend of hers there. I forget what her name was. Anyway, I don't know. I was too old to want friends afterwards, and actually I ended up having one friend and that was Andrea Ayano. She was a cripple and she didn't make very many friends and she was always alone, like me, and we got to be good friends.

AR: Was she Hispanic?

MM: Yeah. And then just about the time that we were really getting close, they moved to California. So that's the one I went to see right before she passed away. They took me, the kids took me up there to see her. She must have been about, I guess about eighty-five when we went up there that she died. So...

AR: What kind of food did they serve at those cafes? Was it American food, or Spanish or mixed?

MM: It was a mixture. It was a mixture, you know, because I know that they had Japanese food and they'd order it, but it was mainly like maybe hamburger steak and beef stew and stuff like that that I saw go out more than anything else.

AR: Were the clients like railroad workers and families? Who were the customers?

MM: Mainly...

AR: Tourists?

MM: The ones that worked around there in the stores and they'd go there for lunch or something like that. But the place kept busy.

AR: So in your family, I know that times were hard and stuff, but what kind of holidays did you celebrate? Did celebrate like Fourth of July or did you celebrate Japanese holidays like New Years?

MM: We celebrated Christmas. I mean, no matter what, there was some kind of a decoration, Christmas decoration. My dad used to do that and we'd have... if we didn't have a tree, we would just put it around the doors or something like that, you know. But he managed to celebrate Christmas. I don't remember too much about the Fourth of July or anything like that, but...

AR: What about Christmas presents? What would that be during those hard times?

MM: There wasn't much. In Albuquerque, I remember for Christmas, they managed to give us something. My mother managed to give me a little celluloid doll. That was supposed to be something really precious, because nobody got dolls. And it was about that big and I thought, "Oh, my god, I'm rich. I really got something." But that's the one present that I remember.

AR: And then the Depression hit after that?

MM: It here there. You were lucky if you got...

AR: Apple or an orange or maybe...

MM: Anything like that. No, it was rough. Yeah, we went through a lot of rough times. And like this, it made it rougher... well, in a way, I went through a little bit rougher time than... now like my sister, Josephine, she got along with everybody and they all liked her, but they didn't want me. [Laughs] And they wanted not my sister, Margaret, the one's that the youngest one that lives here now. She's quiet. You have to kind of force her to talk, you know, and she's still a quiet person. And, whatchamacallit, with me, I guess I was outspoken.

AR: Stood up to them?

MM: Yeah, I guess. I had to learn how to defend myself. [Laughs] I don't know what, defend myself from what. But anyway, I survived.

AR: You know, from talking to some of the other people around town, with a lot of the Japanese Americans, at least the children, the Nisei, were Methodist. There were big Methodist church services.

MM: Oh.

AR: So I wonder if there was any tension between you guys being Catholic and them being Methodist or being Protestant? I don't know.

MM: Not that I recall, no.

AR: You said your father converted to Catholicism?

MM: You mean a Catholic? He became a Catholic here, and whatchamacallit, after he became a Catholic, they got married here, through the church, my father and my mother. So he became a Catholic.

AR: Okay. And they got remarried in the church.

MM: Yeah.

AR: Ah, okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.