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

<Begin Segment 35>

KL: So you came back to California, back home after your army service?

GM: Yeah, yeah. I met her two years after I came out.

KL: What did you do for work?

GM: When I first met her, I was trying to go to school then, and I dropped out after a while. So I ended up working in a dental supply house. I was aspiring to go to dental school, and I thought, well, maybe if I work in a dental supply house. And then, I was working in a dental supply house, and in '62, we moved to a brand-new apartment, it was about seven other tenants that were about my age, early '30s. And this guy next door was a cop, he was going to school. And I said, "You're going to school?" He said, "Come on, George, we're not that old," and all that. And I was two years shy of a bachelor's degree at that time. I wasn't shooting for a bachelor's before, I thought you could get into dental school with just an AA. So that's when I decided to go back to Cal State L.A. to get my undergraduate. Then I remember the first day after I got my undergraduate degree, I took a class in, I graduated class. And I used to take a lot of notes when I went back to school. I used to tell the younger students, "I'm not trying to ace the class, I'm just trying to keep up with you young guys." But anyway, that day I came home from school, that class, I threw my tablet, and my wife goes, "It's blank." I said, "I know. I don't need to go to graduate school." [Laughs] That was enough.

Off camera: What was you major?

GM: Sociology, general sociology. Yeah, because at that time, since I was a life science major before, pre-dent, where one plus one is two. And I took a course in psychology and I said, "These guys are trying to make a science out of mind, you can't do that." Then I took a course in sociology and I said, "Okay, they seem to be just not sure, but they were all [inaudible] this and that." So there was less resources in the sociology department, but I thought, okay, I feel more comfortable in that. Although, of course, psychology may be more appropriate to our life, I don't know.

KL: Did you -- I was just gonna kind of ask for highlights of that.

GM: And then I moved to Arizona because my wife has asthma and all that. And this one lady in south Pasadena, she and her family came from Detroit originally. And I got to know her, she was managing some apartment. And one day I told her, "Grace, I can't stand L.A. anymore." Because my wife couldn't handle the moisture. Anytime we went to the beach, we had to come home as soon as the sun would set. And then I was going bananas in my mind. And she said, "Go to Tucson." "Isn't that where John Wayne chases Indians?" She goes, "Damn you, George, no, it's a city there." [Laughs] And we went there, and I didn't know it at that time, but the copper mines which has, the major industry in southern Arizona at that time, maybe still yet, they were experiencing seven month strike. So the skies were bluer than even the natives had ever seen it. And I was driving with my son, and this peak Picacho Peak, that's the only place where there was a Civil War skirmish, about fifty miles. And I asked my son, "Did you ever see a purple mountain, Corey?" And he goes, "No," and I explained to him why it's purple and all that. And after I moved there, I started telling, "Guys, hey, smog." And they go, "George, we don't have smog here. That's L.A." I said, "You're talking to an expert, okay? That's smog, you damn fool." But anyway, I got there and I started working on vocational rehab, working with the handicapped. Because at that time, you didn't need a graduate degree, just undergraduate, some experience and all that. And I guess I had worked, in L.A. I had worked for the social service department or the old welfare department, I worked there for about three years before I went to Tucson. So then I started working in rehab. And then about 1980, my brother-in-law talked me into managing a hot dog restaurant.

KL: That was still in Tucson?

GM: Yeah, that was 1980, and then we did that for about seven years. And then the last job I had was working with people that lost their jobs because of business closure, foreign competition and all that. It was a great program. I was already in my mid-fifties by that time.