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KL: And you said you remember Sacramento, but where were your parents before Sacramento?

MO: I guess he was in Sacramento doing other things. I think he used to work in a hotel, small hotel, and I think he was a shoe cobbler. I don't know what else he did, but those were two of the things that I do remember. But mainly I think the restaurant was his biggest span of life there. He worked real hard. He was a nice father, as long as you didn't do anything bad, he was fine.

KL: What was his role in the restaurant?

MO: We had a Chinese cook, a chef, and my dad used to help him. And he knew how to cook also, my mother knew how to cook also, but the chef did all the cooking. And I guess he was, my mother would serve, or my father would serve, and they would clean up after the customers left and stuff like that, clean up, take care of the place.

KL: Do you remember the chef's name?

MO: I just remember his first name, Wing, but we used to call him Harry, you know. Wing, he was a real nice guy, very good cook. I used to be so chubby because I used to eat so much of his food. [Laughs] And one time we had to take a picture, family picture, and we had to wear a suit, but I didn't have one, so I had to go to a tailor and have one made because I was so chubby, I couldn't buy it off the rack. But I lost it.

KL: Do you know how they met, your father and Wing?

MO: No, I don't. He was there as long as I can remember, from the time I was there 'til we left.

KL: What was the restaurant, how do you describe the inside of it? Like how many tables?

MO: Oh, we had booths. About seven or eight booths, and the partitions, we had partitions between each booth, and they could take those partitions down to make it a larger. And then we had a big room in the back where they used to have wedding receptions and things like that.

KL: Who were the clientele?

MO: Mostly Japanese people, friends. Yeah, I guess we didn't have too many Caucasian customers, mostly Japanese customers. And there was quite a few Japanese in Sacramento, around that area, in the country area, people used to come into town, they used to come in to eat, stuff like that. I got to know some of them. He had a pretty extensive clientele there, clientele, I don't know if that's the right word.

KL: Yeah, I don't know either. [Laughs]

MO: Customers.

KL: What was the street name that it was on?

MO: M Street.

KL: M, just the letter?

MO: Yeah. It was 318 M Street, now it's called Capitol Avenue, that's the street where you go down and you run straight into the Capitol Building. And that area was Japantown, between Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Street, between L and O Street. Sacramento was alphabetical and numerical.

KL: I like that.

MO: Yeah, it's easy.

KL: Where did you guys live?

MO: We lived above the restaurant. There was a little apartment up there, all of us used to share this one big room.

KL: Your whole family?

MO: The whole family, yeah. All the kids and mother and father.

KL: Did you do your own cooking ever, or just always...

MO: Cooking?

KL: Uh-huh.

MO: When I was little, I used to make my own noodles. You know, I used grab a bunch of noodles, just throw it in the hot water and cook it up and get the broth and make it. It wasn't that difficult.

KL: Did you have a kitchen in your apartment?

MO: No, no.

KL: Just down in the restaurant.

MO: We always used to eat in the restaurant. My biggest treat was going down maybe four or five... not buildings, but stores down, and there used to be an American restaurant run by a Japanese person, and he used to have American food. And that was my treat, going down there and eat roast beef with gravy. You know, you get tired of Chinese food after a while. [Laughs]

KL: Three meals a day you were there?

MO: Yeah.

KL: Who owned the building that the restaurant and the apartment...

MO: We rented it. Never did own that place. We used to rent the whole thing and the apartment upstairs where we slept. And the chef used to sleep in the back, there was another apartment in the back, and he used to sleep there. It was one cozy family.

KL: Yeah, you'd have to get along to live and work that close.

MO: Yeah.

KL: What was the restaurant's name?

MO: M Chop Suey. Simple.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.