Densho Digital Archive - Osamu Mori Interview (denshovh-mosamu-01-0020)

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RP: Did you have any support from individuals or organizations in your efforts to resettle?

OM: No, other than the hostel in Koyasan providing a place, there was no government agency or no, we didn't... see, the thing is we don't have any relatives, I don't have any relatives other than my brother and sister now, since my parents passed away. There's no extended family, so other than relying on friends or distance relatives from back or acquaintance from Japan, you don't have any. But we were able to get by. As soon as we went to Fresno, or Clovis, that's where we ended up, Clovis, things started to turn around, settled down a little bit. We went to school there, high school there, I graduated there. I didn't go on to any college or anything but my brother graduated, he was valedictorian there and he went right on to school. The family kind of went along and provided whatever it could. He got a scholarship to medical school and this and that, the family had to do some providing but we're able to do that. Things worked out okay.

RP: And you served during the Korean War?

OM: Yes, uh-huh. 1950, was it '50 it started, I went in October, or September I think it was. You know I can't remember now, I think it was October. It was a Friday, the 13th, I think, 1950 and I didn't go to Korea, I was in the service then but after basic at Fort Ord, I went to Georgia and joined the... they were putting together the 4th Division to go to Europe and that's where I ended up, in Europe for about fifteen months. And then got discharged sometime in September, I spent twenty three years... twenty three months in the service, you know, as a draftee, not a volunteer but a draftee, and I used that GI Bill to go to Berkeley. And the rest is history [Laughs]

RP: You were an accountant for quite some time?

OM: Yeah, well, I guess, just like all accountants, you end up finally kind of in administrative duties, right, you don't do anymore accounting, you just manage people and that kind of stuff, you know. Yeah, I was kind of fortunate, although I had to drag the family from L.A. to here. But it was all for I guess promotion or whatever, you know. But things worked out okay.

RP: How did you two meet up?

OM: How did we... yeah, mutual friend.

Off camera: [Inaudible]

OM: He was a good friend, oh, he went to Hanford, right but he was about my brother's age, huh, Kiyo?

OM: Yeah. He and I were freshmans at Berkeley and we took chemistry together. He was a... what is it? A geology major and I was an accountant but we're taking chemistry and he had to have chemistry but as a geology major, he was one terrible candidate for geology because if he walked by ten feet from poison ivy, he got it, you know. And he was taking all kinds of anti-allergy kind of pills and he struggled with that for years. Finally he gave it, he says, "I can't do this anymore." Because every time he thought he had it licked, he's walk by and sure enough, he'd catch it. So he was spending more time in the hospital than class so he finally changed his major but he's the guy that introduced us.