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RP: I want to go back to before the war began. And, let's see, can you tell us a little bit about, if you can recall it, the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed?
RM: Oh, yeah.
RP: And what, I know you were really young. If you had a reaction, share it with us. Mostly I'm interested in your parents and how they responded.
RM: Yeah, well, they were... I was sick, like now. And I went out and we had a building put up about a year before and it had a kitchen in it and a couch and stuff like that. So they put me on the couch, set me on the couch and I listened to the radio. And that's when I heard about it. Pearl Harbor was bombed. I didn't know where the hell Pearl Harbor was, you know, where it was. They say Japanese are doing the bombing. They bombed. So I told my father right away. And he, he shook his head, you know. Said, [inaudible].
RP: And he was sending money back to his family?
RM: Yeah, we had to send... keep them up there in the rice business and then that, they had this mountain, like I said, they were timber, like replanting timber. Then they, I guess they did pretty good on that. They had, nine, ten kids, cousins back there, that family.
KP: When did your grandfather return to Japan?
RM: Near...
RP: 1919?
RM: I think '30, '30 or '29, somewhere around there. He, he passed away right on the boat going back to... they stopped in Australia and he had got a cold or something, flu.
RP: And he died?
RM: Yeah.
RP: He never got back to Japan?
RM: Uh-huh.
RP: Huh. Did your father ever go back before the war to Japan?
RM: No.
RP: No.
RM: Well, he was the same... you know, it was Depression.
RP: Right.
RM: So he couldn't make money. In fact, my mother got him out of the Depression.
RP: Your mother did?
RM: Yeah. When they got married then he had, I think it was $5,000 or something in debt so he and my mother worked on it and got him out. Got him out from debt.
RP: Really? She had...
RM: She had some business learning.
RP: Oh, she did. So she helped business...
RM: She run a pool hall. [Laughs] Six...
KP: I thought it was an ice cream parlor.
RM: Ice cream parlor and pool hall.
RP: Where?
RM: Oxnard.
RP: In Oxnard?
RM: When she was a kid. She had one table, that's all they had.
RP: Really?
RM: Yeah, and she used to make money off that. She bought her first Packard, you know, Packard, the back end Packard? That one she bought it and my uncle took it away, rode around. [Laughs]
RP: Oh. So that's where she picked up her business savvy.
RM: Yeah.
RP: And so she...
RM: She's very business-like.
RP: So she helped your dad out of debt with that experience.
RM: Yeah. Well, working there helps, too.
RP: He helped, she helped with the books and the accounting, that type of thing?
RM: Yeah. That's...
RP: Huh, wow.
<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.