<Begin Segment 10>

DC: Do you think that life changed for Japanese Americans in New Mexico as a result of the war?

MM: Well, there weren't too many Japanese Americans in Albuquerque. I think we were the only family for a long time There was a lot of Japanese men married to... there was one married to a European lady, one married to a Spanish lady. And we didn't really become that friendly, but we were able to go and visit them and all. And they'd come... the Japanese men would come but their wives wouldn't come with them to our place. Bashful.

DC: That's funny. So did you experience Albuquerque any differently before and after the war?

MM: No. They were nice to us, I mean... Idon't think anything happened except with Governor Tingley.

DC: Did you feel like your citizenship had no value as Charlie was saying, did you feel like that, too?

ET: I think the people that went to camp noticed it more than we did, I think, since we didn't go to camp. And they, they had a lot of hardship compared to... we didn't have any hardship, I don't think.

DC: It wasn't a hardship to leave California so abruptly?

ET: Well...

MM: You know, it was nice for us because we were coming back to what, where we used to live. It was...

ET: And the people that went to camp, they just went to live in not a regular home, they even, like Santa Ana, or no Santa Anita where the horses were, they had to clean that up to live in the place like that. So I think that might have made them feel bad.

MM: But then of course we didn't know what it was like to go back to California, like my girlfriend, one of the very best girlfriends, she got married in camp and it was, it was really something different. She wrote me a letter and says, "I'm going to marry so and so," and I said, that's funny. Her husband-to-be was one of our very good friends. I didn't know about that you know. And so she married him and they've been moved back to California, and she said there was no place to go for a long time because they were looking for houses and all, and so she said, "We rented a place somewhere in the country," she told me. And she said, "You know, and when we went to bed it was next to a pigpen," okay, their bedroom, and she said that was a horrible thing to do. And so I thought, oh wow, am I glad I'm in New Mexico.

DC: That was her experience in the camp or after she left the camp?

ET: After, wasn't it?

MM: After evacuation. See, they were all, they had to move out of the camp, either go on their own or the government was paying their way back where they want to go. I don't know too much about it but my girlfriend, she went through some misery.

ET: So we don't understand what it was to be in a camp.

DC: Were you in touch with a lot of people who were in camps?

ET: I wasn't that much, but then still...

MM: We were the minority who didn't, who went on our own. My dad just, three girls and a boy, he says, "No, we're not going to go into camp and struggle in a little bedroom, one-room house," and so he decided we're going to come back and he did contact the deputy marshal there, federal man, and he said, "Well, come on back, we'll take care of you," so we drove back.

DC: So that was very uncommon, right, for people not to go to camp?

CM: Besides their family, there's a very rare few that had an outside interest from California. Because they came from New Mexico into California, so it was easy for them to go back to New Mexico during this war crisis. But others were all California, well, they had no place to go, there was no connection outside of their, within their state or city or whatever. And so, you know, it was a big shock. They were well settled down and then this war broke out, well, they have to... lost everything what they established and all the hard work they had put in to make a good living. And they were comfortable there and doing well, and then the outbreak of the war that destroyed everything.

DC: What was it like for your parents to have to leave the business?

MM: Well, you know, they didn't complain too much.

ET: They didn't say too much, but they... we used to sell meat, too, so somebody says, "Oh, there's a lot of lunchmeat and stuff, just pack it in your refrigerator and you can eat it on the road." [Laughs] But anyway, we had to leave a lot of... well, all the groceries, a lot of canned, whatever we were selling we had to leave. And I remember they delivered a new walk-in refrigerator that my dad bought, and we couldn't, there's nothing we could do with it, had to leave it.You didn't have time to sell it or anything, so we just... but I think my dad said, "Well, just leave it, we'll just go."

DC: Did your parents express any frustration or resentment?

MM: You know, my folks never showed us any kind of thinking, "Well, we don't know what we're going to do for you," this or that, they never said anything like that, no, just the natural...

ET: They were good to us. We were spoiled.

MM: I don't think we were spoiled. We were intelligent. We didn't want to give our folks a lot of problem either, you know.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.