<Begin Segment 10>

TM: Well, we went to Japanese school on Saturdays. Yeah.

RP: And where, where was that school?

TM: Right in Torrance.

RP: Was it part of a church or a...

TM: No, individual.

RP: Individual school? Most of the schools were financed by the parents --

TM: I think so, yeah.

RP: -- who had donated money and paid the teachers.

TM: Yeah.

RP: What do you, what are your remembrances of that Japanese school? What were you taught?

TM: Oh.

RP: How far did you get?

TM: Oh, I went to... well we, we calculate how far did you get by what book you... I went to Book Twelve. In other words, just about all the way, yeah. But I can't read or write, I mean, you know, just speak, speak quite fluently. Like I go to Japan, I managed to get around.

RP: Was the emphasis on language or did you also have classes on history and culture and was there any, ever any sort of, sort of emperor worshipping that went, went on there? Bowing to the emperor's picture or...

TM: Oh, no. Uh-huh. No. See my father was, I don't know, he, he was really different. He, I don't know how to... he had his mindset. Once he got here he never, he never wanted to go back to Japan. That's why in 1930 when we went back, five kids and my mother, my father didn't go.

RP: Oh, he didn't? That was his statement.

TM: Yeah. He left the country and he just didn't want to go back.

RP: Did he have any relatives or other family members who came to the United States?

TM: Oh, yeah. He had an older brother and... so we had cousins in Costa Mesa, and they were farming in Costa Mesa. I guess that's one of the reasons why my father decided to go to Costa Mesa, Yeah, uh-huh. Then I had a aunt that came from Japan. She was, she was living here. But she had no children. She... yeah.

RP: What was her name?

TM: Misaye.

RP: Misaye.

TM: Misaye, yeah. we used to call her Misaye-obasan.

RP: So you attended junior high school in...

TM: Redondo Beach.

RP: Redondo Beach.

TM: Uh-huh. Yeah, high school in Redondo Beach, yeah.

RP: Tell us about your high school years. Was it predominately sports was kind of what your focus in high school?

TM: Yeah, right. Not too much studying. [Laughs] So I don't have any, anything special as far as, or...

RP: So you made it on the junior varsity team...

TM: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

RP: In football?

TM: Uh-huh. And then junior varsity in basketball, too, uh-huh.

RP: What position did you play in both of those sports?

TM: Oh, in football I played half-back, yeah. In basketball I played kind of a forward, a small forward, but I used to do all the shooting. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright (c) 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.