Densho Digital Archive - Richard M. Murakami Interview (denshovh-mrichard

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LP: Today is November 19, 2014. Present in the room is Larisa Proulx, NPS staff with the Tule Lake Unit, Kristen Luetkemeier, NPS staff at Manzanar, and Richard Murakami, and we're doing an oral history interview. Richard, do I have your permission to record this interview for the Park Service to retain it and use it for educational purposes?

RM: Yes.

LP: Thank you. So I'd like to start off by asking you when and where you were born.

RM: I was born January 29, 1932, in Florin, California, which is seven miles from Sacramento.

LP: And could you talk about your family, your mom and your dad, where they came from?

RM: My father was born in Hawaii, and my mother in California, so I'm a (third) generation, or what Japanese call a Sansei. And as far as what they call the mainland, I'm what they call an older Sansei. And I have four brothers and two sisters, all born in the United States.

LP: So how did your father end up over on the mainland?

RM: Pardon?

LP: How did your father end up over on the mainland?

RM: Well, see, my grandparents, when my father was born in Hawaii, when my father was about five or six years old, I believe, they went back to Japan, and he stayed there 'til he was, I think around eighth grade, and then my grandfather came back and started farming, grape farming near Sacramento, in Florin, where I was born. And my mother's parents, he was doing different things, and when my grandfather -- that's on my mother's side, he was raising chickens. And I don't know when he came to the United States. We suspect he was a Canadian "wetback," but we're not too sure.

LP: So what was growing up in Sacramento like?

RM: See, I was only a young kid. The only thing I remember about growing up in Sacramento is I don't know how old I was, but riding in an old truck. But I grew up in Lakewood, California, where my father was farming. That's where I grew up until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we lived there. And we moved to Florin after the war started, and the reason we moved there is 'cause my father was the oldest son, and in Japanese families, the oldest son becomes the head of the family. So he took all of the sisters together and moved everybody to Florin except his older sister. And his older sister did not want to move with us because my uncle was picked up by the FBI and put in a Justice camp, and she didn't want to go with us because she said if she went with us, my uncle would not know where they were. So they were the only family that didn't go with us, so all of us ended up in Florin, and from Florin we went to the camp together, so that's what happened.