<Begin Segment 23>

KL: When you came back to Fresno, did you have, I guess you found another job. Were you still teaching, or what was your life like?

MU: I had some, a classmate who was a head teller in the local bank, and so I wondered if there was a job at the bank, so I went and she got me a jump, a job as a teller. And then when that particular office closed and moved to another building, I was, I worked as new accounts, opened new accounts. And I worked how many years, thirteen years.

KL: And then retired?

MU: Yeah. And I had, my mother died, so I had to help take care of my brother, too.

KL: How long did he live? This is your youngest brother?

MU: He lived until (1992), so he was some, what, he was about fifty-four years. He lived a long time for a cerebral palsy person.

KL: What, where did your other siblings lives take them after the time in Jerome and Rohwer? I know one of them was a missionary. Would you just go through your siblings and...

MU: I have one sister, Lily, went as a missionary.

KL: What about Tosh? What was the rest of his --

MU: He was a farmer. He worked on the farm.

KL: Did he keep that twenty acres for all of his life?

MU: Yeah, and he worked for other people, too. He worked for a neighbor.

KL: You started, I interrupted you. You said he was a farmer, but what were you gonna say? I didn't mean to interrupt.

MU: He was also Boy Scout leader. He led the young people in different things.

KL: And Lily was a missionary. What about Kats, Katsumi?

MU: Kats was a farmer. He wanted to go to bible school, but then the family needed him, so he stayed on the farm.

KL: In Fresno area.

MU: In Caruthers, yeah.

KL: And Aiko?

MU: Aiko was married and down south. She and her husband were in Japan. He went as a military person and she went there, they spent quite a few years there in Japan. And she tells the story of, they went to one, I don't know exactly what it was, but the prince, the prince... what was his name? Anyway, the Emperor's brother, prince, helped put on her jacket, and she said it was quite an experience to have somebody from the Imperial Palace do that for her. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, I guess so. Your family strikes me as being pretty bold and pretty committed to, to responding to their experiences, being sent off the farm and being confined. Like your response to the questionnaire, qualifying your answers, your sister's letter to the editor, all of Saburo and Marion's --

MU: I guess we were pretty independent. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, do you, why do you think that is? Why are guys as cool as you are? [Laughs]

MU: I don't know. I don't know whether it's in our, part of our nature to respond that way.

KL: Were there --

MU: But I think it was the situation, whether right or wrong, you have to decide, do what we think is the right thing to do.

KL: How did you think that played out in all of your adult lives? Were there campaigns that you participated in or conversations you had that were rooted in your experiences early on?

MU: I think it helped us to make, not go along with the general public but make our own decision, yeah. And having gone through evacuation and the war, it changes us and the way we think.

KL: Have there been other times in your life when you have been reminded of what it was like in 1941 and '42? Do you ever worry, or have you ever worried that something could happen that's similar again?

MU: I don't know about the siblings, but I think, I think it had an effect on the way we felt, way we thought, dealing with people.

KL: Do you, what can you tell me about your memories of the redress movement in the 1980s?

MU: The redress movement? I, the government treated her people, citizens, unjustly. I don't know that the monetary was the, the best solution to that, but the Japanese people suffered a loss. They had to leave everything. Some were more fortunate than others, but I think the government needed to help the people get back on their feet by giving some money, yeah.

KL: You have visited a lot of the sites where people were confined. Would you tell us about those visits, why, where you've been and why you went, and what it was like to be there?

MU: After the war?

KL: Yeah.

MU: After the war. Well, in 1949, I decided to go to college, and I wasn't thinking, I was thinking of missions, but not necessarily missionary to Japan, but I met a fellow from Japan and after, well, we got married and I went back to Japan. I went to Japan, and he died the following, we went back in September, he died in January, and I decided to stay on and continue teaching conversational English and ended up staying thirteen years.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.