<Begin Segment 24>

DC: How have your feelings about the country evolved or about your citizenship evolved? You said during the war you felt like your citizenship wasn't worth anything. How do you feel about it now?

CM: Well, I feel great. I'm alive and I'm American citizen and I broke no law and I feel free and I feel good. I think I did my part.

DC: Is there anything else that you'd like people to know about Japanese American history during World War II or about the experiences of Japanese Americans in New Mexico?

MM: I haven't heard too many people complain, but if they complained, I don't know what about.

ET: Maybe they're not telling us.

MM: That's true.

ET: Of course, we don't have too many, not too many here in New Mexico left, you know. Some of the people that were in camp they've gone back or passed away. I mean, they've gone back to California or Nevada.

DC: Charlie, do you have any concluding thoughts?

CM: Well, the only thing that... the Japanese part is thinning out. It's... unless the next wave of Japanese, group from Japan comes in and keep up the Japanese custom and their things. As way things are going now locally here, it's all thinning out and the intermarriage, it thins it out. And it loses real true feeling of the custom. Now all customs are not all perfect, but I liked it. Many of the Japanese customs, they should continue.

DC: Like which ones in particular?

CM: Well, you know, their custom is to carry on and fight and get the job done.

MM: Well, the young generations now, they're so happy as is.

CM: Well, they've got their good education, they don't have to work as hard as we did.

MM: They've got the good education. Went to UNM graduation and I was so happy to see so many people graduate now in the field of pharmacy. Oh, gee, that was a, there was just a bunch of them, they got doctor degrees. Did you know that? That's the first time I realized.

CM: You know, then she's now talking about education. During our period of time, college education, they were brilliant, they got scholarship to college, after graduation there were no jobs for them, so many of them went to Japan to get the job to use their degrees and education. Now that's changed now. So you have education now, it's wide open for us. So all of them are going to higher education. At that early stage, the education was fine, you got... but there were no job for Oriental at that time, and that was a really, really... our folks said, "Well, you Nisei better go into more on the skill side, get into business." But through college education with that degree, there's no jobs for you. That was a setback there, but now it has changed completely.

MM: It's changed now.

ET: This last class of pharmacy, everybody had, according to them, they all had a job somewhere.

MM: It was amazing. They called our name out and they tell us where they're going to go work already. It's amazing.

ET: We had one in our family too and he's working at the university this year. He just graduated.

DC: This is a grandson of yours?

ET: It would be my nephew... no, wait a minute, it's my son...

MM: It's your grandson.

ET: Grandson, my grandson, yeah. He's my second oldest, right? Yeah, and then I had two more, and then I have to great granddaughters.

DC: Wow.

MM: And we're so happy because we're really...

CM: You're a grandma, I'm an uncle still. [Laughs]

DC: Well, we should wrap up, unless there's anything that you'd like to say?

MM: Thank you very much.

DC: Well, thank you.

MM: I hope you learned something from us.

DC: It was very informative.

DC: You're going to have to cut about ninety-nine percent of the film. [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.