<Begin Segment 11>

JS: Do you remember any of the holidays celebrating, like, New Year's? Do you remember New Year's?

DM: Yes, New Year's, Japanese have all the business, I mean, homes open, so we had to go to... and this lady said, "You got to come back," you know. So they give you a little shot of drink, and every time we go to the place you got to have a little shot of drinks. They say it's sake, but I don't think so. But after a while, after second or third house... [laughs]. So we quit drinking every time we're heading out, see. But all the houses opened up for us. The whole town is, that's how it is, Japanese.

JS: So how many houses would you go to?

DM: At least five that I know of. A lot of places we'd have to turn it down because it's too much.

JS: Too much.

DM: So we'd usually go to the, where the kids, so we'd know the kids.

JS: So you'd go to your friends' houses, where you had...

DM: Yes, more or less friends.

TI: Would there be times -- I'm thinking about the town and how it was set up -- earlier you mentioned that the doors were just like wide open, people could kind of go in. Did you ever eat at other, like your friends' houses sometimes? You're playing and maybe eat at someone else's house, or did you always go home to eat?

DM: You mean for dinner or lunch?

TI: Yeah, lunch maybe, or...

DM: That's one thing we didn't do. When it's dinnertime, we'd go home, or lunchtime we'd go home.

TI: How about things like discipline? If say you're with a group of boys, and maybe you're doing something that maybe is wrong or, like, mischievous. Did some of the adults in town scold you guys, like, "Don't do that," or things like that? How was that?

DM: Well, one thing my dad was strict on was if you borrow somebody's bike, he tells you, "Take it back." He says, "Take it back where you got it." He didn't want nothing that belongs to you.

TI: So don't borrow things, you mean? Always return...

DM: Right. He was strict on that.

TI: And why do you think that was? Why was he so strict about...

DM: I think he believed in honesty, I guess, or whatever you call it. "If it don't belong to you, take it back."

JS: So do you remember mochitsuki? Did you used to make mochi?

DM: Oh, yes. That's the one thing we always had in our house. There was Fujisaki, Yoshiwara, just about three other families used to come and we had a two-car garage, it's not a big one, but it's two-car garage, enough for, we used to have three (other) families with us, four families, pound that mochi. Dad had a big old metal, with a cement inside for the pounding, and he had a pot for, put kettles and all that heat. And then he had a big bowl laid out for the ladies to... it's all set up for, so we had to stay away because we were too small. And then all the older boys pound on the... we had nice mochi for, yeah, four of us, four families. We make it, one for the one family, then next group is for next family.

JS: And would you get to taste the fresh, hot mochi? Freshly made?

DM: Well, my dad used tell us small kids to stay away from here until it's, you know, get in the way. But like you say, we had mochi. Mother used to say sure, to go, okay, get out there. [Laughs]

JS: And how did you eat your mochi? Did you eat it with any, like, shoyu and sugar or kinako?

DM: (Yes).

JS: Which way?

DM: That's... what do you call that? Satoujuuyu? You know, you mix it with sugar and shoyu, and then just the mochi, you kind of heat it up so, stretch it out and then... I don't know what you call that thing, but that's good.

JS: That's good.

DM: In fact, it was in the army I had that.

JS: In the army? Who made mochi in the army?

DM: (Yes), I was in Korea, when I was on R&R, you heard of R&R? Rest and Recuperation? Went to Tokyo where my sister was. (It was during New Year's Eve). And on the way back, I stopped and got that mochi and shoyu, and Japanese sugar. So when I brought it back to the, Korea, I started making it and shoyu, and it tastes awful. I mean, really bad. And I (tasted) that sugar and the sugar was flat, 'cause (sugar made during wartime was artificial, I think). So this guy from Italia, I mean, Italy, Italian (American) guy from Missouri, he went to the mess hall and got American sugar. Man, what a difference. So he says, "Ask your mother to, father to send some more." [Laughs] So I wrote Dad to send me some more, and he'd send me a five-pound mochi and a shoyu, and we got the sugar from the mess hall. We had a good time. But he was the only son in the family, and his mother taught him how to make spaghetti. She sent all the raw stuff, now, raw stick, or what do you call that?

JS: The noodle?

DM: Even the spaghetti sauce, he made everything right there in... yeah. We had, I don't know if you know the sembei can, we had it folded up like a pan, we used that as a pan and yeah, he made all that sauce. And him and I, we had a spaghetti and meatball. He was a good cook.

JS: So you would just make it in your...

DM: In the tent.

JS: In the tent?

DM: Yeah.

TI: That's great. So he shared Italian food, you shared Japanese food.

DM: Our, we were in the anti-aircraft group from Alabama, and most of those people don't know any Japanese food or Italian food, so just two of us. [Laughs]

JS: So what year was that?

DM: Well, I was in the service '51 and '52, so mostly in '51, I was in Korea nine months.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.