<Begin Segment 9>

AR: Do you remember the year? Was it 1942, right when all the evacuation was starting?

MM: Right around there, yeah. Right around there, because we come back and that's when they had opened all the camps here, and in Wingate...

AR: Military bases?

MM: With the big buses. That's when Louie got a job there driving the workers to work in these big buses that they had. And he stayed here until, well, they called him.

AR: So when you guys moved to California, you're saying that the Japanese people that were living there were being moved out?

MM: They were all being put out of California.

AR: Now did you see the signs that said "Japanese not allowed to work here" and you didn't worry about it?

MM: Yeah, that's right.

AR: You just flew under the radar, huh?

MM: Well, there was no way... I was not supposed to be Japanese. I was Mary Montoya. So I got away with it.

AR: That's interesting, yeah. It would be interesting to pin down the dates that you were there, because you probably were breaking some law by being there after March, after March or April. So, do you remember what the weather was like when you came back here? Was it summer or was it winter, or you don't know?

MM: I can't remember.

AR: A long time ago. So you don't have a lot of memories of what it was like for Japanese people here in Gallup at the start of the war, do you or do you? Do you remember the Japanese American people of Gallup having troubles or anything like that?

MM: Well, the thing about it was that before the war, they were very proud, very, they were... you know. And I tell you, you don't come near me. I'm full blooded Japanese. You're just dirt, you know. But, after the war, boy, I mean, they couldn't find friends enough. They wouldn't talk to me before that. I was just dirt to them. After the war, oh my god, they couldn't... "Toki this and Toki that," and Toki said, "You go jump in a lake."

AR: So you really don't have any experience of being Japanese and feeling the pressure from the outside, right?

MM: Not as much as some did. I mean, and I went to work for the Japanese all that time until I got married. I was working for the Shibatas. They had a restaurant right here on Cole Avenue and I was there until I got married. And I got married and I didn't work for a while, and then Louie was called into the service. And we were getting a hundred dollars allotment and that wasn't doing it for us, so I told Louie, "I'm going to have to go to work, because we can't make it on this."

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.