<Begin Segment 16>

TI: We're gonna start the second part, and before we go to your military service, there are a couple areas I want to talk about. The first one, we talked a little bit about your father as a minister, and you talked about his sermons and how he was able to talk to, to different audiences. Tell me about that.

MT: Yeah. My father, like I said, to me, he's, from what I heard... I don't know how true this is. I heard from a lot of people, but in Japan, when he was going to school, when he was going to high school, they have a country or county or something, they have some kind of IQ test. And he came in, my mother came in number one in the whole village -- not village, but the whole state as a number one scholar. And my father came as number two. So I've got two very intelligent parents. I don't know why I didn't get any of it. And my sister and I joke about it all the time, said, "Shigeru" -- that's my brother -- "Shigeru gets, he got all the brains and he didn't leave anything for us." And that's true, really, because he got straight-A-plus through high school. He got scholarship, he was an honor student, but heck, I'd be glad if I got B average. But he did get all the brains, I think. But I got something he didn't get was he didn't, he had a different personality than I have. He didn't like people. [Laughs]

TI: He was book-smart, but not really people-smart.

MT: Yeah, he wasn't people-smart. In fact, if we got in a fight or something, if I got in a fight with somebody, he'll probably help the other guy beat me up.

TI: Your brother would help?

MT: Yeah. If I would argue with the guy, he's right and I'm wrong. Oh, it's terrible. Brother, he should treat me just the opposite and protect me, you know, older brother. But I was protecting him all the time 'cause my friends all got mad at him, all didn't like him because he keep picking on me all the time. So they want to beat him up. So I said, "Don't beat him up, he's my brother." [Laughs]

TI: So why do you think your older brother picked on you so much? Was there something that...

MT: Because he and I are real different, two different kind of guys. I was nice to everybody, he's not. And I guess he resents the fact that I had more friends than he has. And activities, I went to more parties than he did. In sport, I did excel more than he did. So he was jealous in a lot of ways. One time I was playing basketball, it was for State. No, it wasn't State, that was the JACL national basketball tournament in Salt Lake they have every year. And I was playing for a team, and he was playing for the Salt Lake Bussei and I was playing for our own club, the Zephyr clubs. And I kind of made a fool out of him in basketball. And it's a game. He was gonna beat me up, you know? I guess I embarrassed him. [Laughs] I dribbled around him and he got mad. So my brother and I, we never really got along. I mean, I washed the car to go on a date, he would take the car. He said, "I'm gonna go on a date." I said, "I washed the car." He said, "I don't care." He said, "I'm the oldest one, I get to do anything I want." [Laughs] You have to excuse me.

TI: Now, what did your father tell you about that, the difficulties with your brother?

MT: I think he talked to him a lot of times about being nice to me and being nice to people. But he was hated by a lot of people, unfortunately. 'Cause he often wondered why, like, my kids now ask me, "Gee, you talk to everyone and make friends." In fact, the other day, I was going to Safeway, and I saw this old lady getting out of the car, she's having problems, so I went over to help her and we started laughing and talking. Said, "Why you do that for?" my son said. I said, "You got to help people. They're older people." He couldn't understand that. So my wife will say, "You should have been a Bonsan." [Laughs]

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.