Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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KL: Just by way of introduction, this is tape one of an interview with George Morishita. I'm Kristen Luetkemeier for the Manzanar oral history project, John Kepford is working the camera, Patricia Biggs, also of the National Park Service, is taking notes, and both of them may chime in at points with questions. Today is August the 6th, 2013, and we're here in the Fremont Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas as part of the Manzanar reunion this year. And before we get started, I just want to formally ask George, do we have your permission to -- I know we sort of talked you into this -- but you're here, we do have your permission to make this conversation happen and record it and make it available to the public?

GM: Yes, of course.

KL: Thank you. I really appreciate your being here. We're going to start off talking some about your parents, and I wondered if you would just sort of briefly introduce us to them, first starting with your mom.

GM: Her name was Toshiyo, her maiden name was Kooro, K-O-O-R-O. I think she was born in 1897, and my dad brought her here just before the 1924 cut off of Japanese immigration.

KL: Where was she from?

GM: Hiroshima, a small village... well, both my parents were from the same village.

KL: Do you know its name?

GM: My father's name?

KL: The name of the village?

GM: Well, it used to be called Miyano, M-I-Y-A-N-O, and the old location was Hiura-mura, H-I-U-R-A, Hiura-mura, but they probably changed it since then. And I think it was Asa-gun, A-S-A G-U-N, and then Hiroshima-ken. I could be wrong, I might have missed something in between. But I know they changed the... the Miyano is still there, but something else.

LK: What did people do who lived in that village? What was it like for work or for sustenance?

GM: You know, when I was in the army in 1952 and I was stationed in Japan, fortunately, I was up in Sendai, the Tohoku area in northern Japan, but I had an older sister who was born in, lived and died in Japan, and I visited her in '52. And at that time, I think, there was only about twenty-five homes. Well, let's see. By that time, I don't think, there weren't too many young people in the village anymore. They were in town working and all that. I did go back in 1967 because in '62, my mother retired. She was a barber, and they supposedly went back to Japan for a two-year visit. By 1967, I realized my dad was extending his stay, and he was going back to his roots. Because he came here in 1906, he served in the Japanese army against the Russians in 1904-'05, I believe.

LK: Did he tell you anything about what that was like?

GM: No, my father didn't tell me anything about... actually, that's a funny story. Because as a kid, boys like to brag about their father was a soldier and all that. And one time when I was fourteen, I got it out of my mom finally, and just as she said, "Yes, he was in the army," my father stepped into the house, and he heard enough, and I could see that he didn't appreciate it. And my mother tried to cover it up and said, "Oh, Papa, I was just telling Georgie that you were so lucky, you got drafted, and the day you got drafted, the war ended." And I thought, "Oh, boy." But when I saw him in Japan in '67 when he was dying, he was telling me all kinds of war stories. That he was real lucky that he lived. And another thing was when the Korean War broke out, he didn't tell me he was in the army, but he tried three, four times telling me, "George, why don't you write to the President and see if you can't get a deferment. Say that you're my only son." And I finally shut him up when I said, "Papa, look. I tell my buddies, 'You want to be in the club, you got to pay your dues.' And if being in the army is part of my dues, okay." So he never said anything until he took a trip to Japan for some reason, and one day I was working at Farmer John's Packing House, I think, and my mom comes to my room and said, "George, this letter's addressed to you." Papa, it was in his room, he never opened it. [Laughs] I remember I yelled, "Mama, I'm supposed to be in the army." It was my draft notice; he hid it.

KL: Do you know what the reason for his resistance was?

GM: Well, no, he was afraid to lose me, I guess. But he didn't tell me at that time he was in the army and he knows what it's like. He told me that years later. But he was trying to see if I can get a deferment, and when I said there's no way, he didn't open the letter, but probably knew what it was. He just kept it. So I ran downtown. I realized years later on that if you're not really trying to get away from the army, they're not going to come after you. And I ran downtown L.A. telling this lady, and I told her the truth, and she said, "Well, when do you want to come in? Do you want to come in Monday?" And I go, "Gosh, everybody gets thirty-day notice." [Laughs] "Can I come in such and such a time?" She said, "Okay." And then I went back to see her and I said, "There's something going on. Can I take another week?" So I went in about two weeks later, after I was supposed to be inducted.

KL: What year was that?

GM: That was in '52, March.

KL: You said your dad told you, toward the end of his life, stories about his war... what kind of memories did he have?

GM: Well, he was telling me... well, he recalls, he said something like, one thing he said was whenever they learned and whenever they saw a Russian airplane flying over, they were spotter planes, he said, "We knew that in about twenty minutes we're going to get bombarded," or something like that. And then another he was saying was he said, "Gee, guys were getting killed left and right of me." He said, "God was with me, I didn't get hit at all." But he was in his... he passed away that year. And I thought, "I'll be darned." But when I was growing up, he once... I guess he was scared being in the United States.

KL: So he was drafted into the military in Japan?

GM: I'm not sure. Because I knew my mom told me he lived as an only son, something like he probably didn't have to go in, but he did. Probably had ideas of getting... I think my mom told me that, how he was able to come here was the money that, mustering out pay or whatever they gave to some of the veterans.

KL: Did you say he was the only son? What do you know about the family he grew up in?

GM: Well, I do know that his parents were quite young, and his father died when he was only about two years old. And his mother, was partly still a teenager, wanted to go back to her village. And back then, the tradition was, or the custom was a young bride or mother like that could take a daughter back where she came from, but not a son. And I found out that Native American, some of the tribes here have some kind of a custom like that, too, 'cause I met a Native American Indian in New Mexico. But anyway...