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KL: Let's switch over to your father and do kind of the same thing for him and his family. What was your father's name?

MM: My father's name was Ikuzo, I-K-U-Z-O. And being in America, he adopted the name of Thomas, so they called him Tom. He was known as Tom. And he was in the army -- I have a picture of him in the army uniform -- and he didn't want to be in the army and kill people. He said, "That's not what I want to do," so he and two friends snuck on a ship going to America and they hid. They hid, and when they were discovered they pulled out their guns that they got from the army and they told the captain, "Take us to America." And the captain said, "Put your gun away." This, my father told me this. "Put your gun away and you work on my ship and I'll take you to America." And that's what the captain did. They worked on the ship, and when it --

KL: Do you know anything about his life growing up, before he was in the army?

MM: No, I don't know anything, 'cause my father never talked about it. And I was too dumb to not ask him about it, really. I'm sorry. That's one of my regrets. But when I got older I said, "How was it when you came to America?" He said it was easy. "It was just easy. You just slip off the ship and nobody's there to stop you." And he made, how he made his way from Long Beach to Salinas I'll never know. I don't know. But they did, they made their way. And they had friends in Salinas, so at least he met up with the friends in Salinas, and he worked on other people's farms. And then when he married my mother, he wanted to be on his own. And he's a good farmer. My father was a good farmer. He knew how to raise all kinds of vegetables, so he raised radish, radishes, green onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, turnips, potatoes. He had a little bit of everything, and he would, he and Mom would get up early in the morning, wash, pick all the vegetables that needed harvesting for the day, wash 'em and bunch 'em up, and my father would take it to the market and market it himself.

KL: Where was the market?

MM: The grocery stores. And he would go from grocery store to grocery store, and he had a truck where all these vegetables were all washed and nice, fresh vegetables, and he would say, "How many dozen radishes today?" and that's how he would do it.

KL: These were grocery stores in Salinas?

MM: Yeah. He knew enough English to know that much. [Laughs] How to keep track of his sales. They did very well.

KL: What was his relationship with the owners of the groceries, or the managers?

MM: I have no idea. I guess it was alright. It was alright 'cause he was doing very well, very well. And my mother said they were making good money, and so she would help other Japanese families by loaning them money so they could get a good start in their farming.

KL: Was there any kind of a Japantown in Salinas?

MM: Well, there was a Buddhist church in town, a small Buddhist church, and there were a few restaurants that I remember, because on Saturday nights, if the movie man came, the Japanese movie man -- he would come from Los Angeles and show Japanese movies, samurai movies or cartoons or whatever, all in Japanese, and so we would go. And they would have these strips of paper with writing on Japanese and how much money each family gave. It's a way of competition, to show other people, "Oh, so-and-so gave only five dollars," and that way the man made money.

KL: Where did the movies play?

MM: At the Buddhist temple. That's where they showed it. And after the movie we would go have a bowl of noodles. Yeah, every time.

KL: Still at the temple?

MM: No, no, no, at the restaurants that was nearby the temple.

KL: What was the temple's name?

MM: It was Salinas Buddhist Temple.

KL: What else was right in that section of town? Or what are other memories of going there?

MM: I just remember that the temple, it was white, and there was a, sort of like a water tank nearby, I remember. But other than that, I don't remember too much. I remember a circus coming into town.

KL: Oh yeah?

MM: Yeah, and my father loved the circus, so he would take us. He was the one that took us. My mother didn't care.

KL: Yeah, what were their personalities? What were some of their --

MM: My mother was very quiet and submissive, I guess you might say. And my father was, I guess... you know, when my father said something we would say, "Mama, what's Papa saying?" because we don't understand Japanese. 'Cause my mother spoke to us in English. We grew up with English, no Japanese.

KL: But she was bilingual.

MM: Yes, because her mother spoke. And somehow we, as children, we understood the Japanese but we didn't speak it. We just understood it. Isn't that funny? I mean, it's, when I think about it, I think it's kind of weird.

KL: Communication is weird.

MM: Yeah. You know what they're saying.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.