<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Well, so you must have been good, too, to play with these, these men. You were good.

NM: Well, no. He's way up there. Zenimura's way up, I'm way down. Basketball took over for me. I started playing basketball, so I'm in the varsity in Edison. And then, in fact, if it wasn't for Fresno High School, I wouldn't have graduated high school. Because I was going to Edison, I was playing basketball like that. I played Edison, I played against Fresno High School. That next semester, I was in Fresno High School. 'Cause I could get one hour off, one hour afternoon off. So I was very lucky to go hour and a half and then graduate. I thought I wasn't gonna graduate. In fact, I slept in the classroom, and Tak kinda saved me. Says, "Well, he's working in the market, coming home late."

JS: So why, why did Fresno High School let you start late and leave early?

NM: They didn't know about that. I just made it, chance. 'Cause I figured, I can get one hour off or something like that. So I went to high school. I thought they weren't gonna let me in, but they let me in, so I stayed there. And I was very lucky to graduate high school. In fact, I was ready to quit, 'cause my body didn't take it. That's why I almost blew the house up. I was lucky I didn't do that.

JS: Can you tell us about sumo? [Indicates photograph] This is you, huh?

NM: Yeah.

JS: Yeah, you're so cute.

NM: Here's Tak.

JS: Oh, that's your friend Tak?

NM: Tak Kunishige. He's alive yet. He and I are the only ones that get together. We get together. He's healthy, and he's an athlete. He was a good football player, basketball player, but baseball, he didn't play. I played baseball. So anyway, Tak Kunishige, he's still healthy.

[Interruption]

JS: Okay, so Nori, I wanted you to describe the sumo wrestling and how that...

NM: How I got into it?

JS: How you got into it and where you would practice.

NM: Yeah. When I was... let's see, how old, I can't remember how old, when I moved from [inaudible], but was a young age. We moved the family home to that church, you know, house. That's when we first moved home. Store was... well, we moved that store, too. We went to E Street, and then we went to Tulare Street, we then went to E Street, and then F Street. F Street was next to the theater. That's third one. That's why my folks moved to F Street, and then we had a home right... church. And then later on, we moved to another home where they had four bedroom. We needed it, four bedroom, because that's... two bedroom, four bedroom, then we had that for our home, only one block away from our store. There's a fire department right there right now, today. Right on the alley corner, our home was there. It's all wooden buildings. That's the one I almost blew up. Gee, lucky I didn't blow it up, yeah. Otherwise, neighbor would have been hurt and all that. We had a store in... then that store, theater, people come in and out. Our store's kind of... got goods. We even bought a popcorn machine, and then the popcorn starts on, and oh, gave the smell all over the town, the popcorn's so good. Yeah, those were, those popcorn goes "bara bara," it comes all out. Gee. And my mother's the only one that touches that. She's used to run the whole popcorn, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and peanuts. They had heated up, and we sold it. And they come by, we had a seed about this size, one time we had this house, we sold. The only reason the Japanese in Fresno survived was the Mexican people. You know, the Mexican people, they all come to Fresno to pick grapes. They go out to the farm picking grapes, but the family, the kids, come with them. The kids help, too. Some places they said they don't want kids, but lot of times they let it go. They can't leave their small kids, you know, so they go together out in the field, so they say, "That's okay." So they work hard. And Friday, they come into town, they have restaurants. I worked in the restaurant, I know they spend money. The family, boy, they eat okay. They eat good. I tell all my Spanish friends, "You know, if it wasn't for you people, we wouldn't have survived," I even told them. They saved us.

JS: So what year was that? When the Mexican families started working in the fields... what years, approximately? 'Cause first, lots of Japanese --

NM: See, there's a lot of Mexican coming in, all the time. And they come to the grape field, and then they start working. And they come into town, and then they come to the restaurant, they come to the store, they go to the movie. You couldn't walk around one block. You got a dozen people. It was that busy. F Street, both sides, full of people, Saturday, Sunday now. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, like that. So they survived, all the Japanese town. Because the restaurants, there was about twelve Japanese restaurants run by Japanese, and they sell nothing but American food, you know, hot dogs, hamburger steak. Hamburger steak is what they wanted. And then they liked beer, too. So we had to learn a little Spanish. [Inaudible] we learned Spanish. I learned Spanish in school. [Laughs] But it was that way. So I tell all my Spanish people, "You saved our lives." Japanese town survived because of them. I worked for the Japanese soda water bottle, making soda water. You know, after my graduation, my dad gave away to the farm, my dad came back to the store. Then, of course, wartime, we had to leave everything.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.