Densho Digital Archive - Yoji J. Matsushima Interview (denshovh-myoji-01-0010)

<Begin Segment 10>

VO: So we're going to have you tell us about coming back to Portland. What was that like?

YM: Coming back to Portland? After we left Texas, we went to Los Angeles and stayed there about a week, I think. As I mentioned earlier, that my dad and the other two, Mr. Horagami and Tambara, they wanted to talk to some of the former inmates that were in Texas, and the other people that he knew about the situation in Los Angeles, about business climate, etcetera. And then they were gonna come back to Portland. So we got back on the train and we came back to Portland, and we were met by a Mr. Okazaki, Haru Ninomiya's father. And the first person that we went to visit was Mr. Oyama, that had a Japanese newspaper in Portland. That's Al Oyama's father, Dr. Oyama's father. The one thing I remember of that conversation we had with him was that my dad kept drinking water there at their apartment. He thought the water tasted so good in Portland compared with Texas, that hard water we were drinking for three years down there. And after that, we went to Haru's house. And coming out of camp and living in the cabins down there, I thought that it was like, wow, what a large, wonderful house that smelled so good and so fresh. And now I look at her house and it's not that big. But at that time, we thought that it was, I thought that it was just a beautiful home. And we stayed with, they put us up for close to a month, and then we went to, my folks decided to move to Vanport because Haru was saying, "You got to get Yoji in school. He's missing too much school." So they wanted me to go to Kenton school, but they decided to go to Vanport and I went to school in Vanport for about a month, which was terrible, the school was. I hated it.

VO: Why was that?

YM: Well, there was a lot of bullying and name calling, and the teacher wasn't very good, nice. And I really didn't want to go to go school.

VO: So the bullying was...

YM: Mostly... Vanport was pretty much predominantly black. And so all the kids in the class were mostly black, calling names and everything else. I'm glad I was out of there in a month.

VO: So you just, the school year was over?

YM: School was over.

VO: And then in the fall?

YM: In the fall, well, you see, that summer, my mother and my brother and I, we picked berries at Shiogi Farms on 109th and Market Street in Portland. And it was in Russellville. And we worked there that summer, and then my father was looking for a location to open the store. So he said that he found a spot, and after we came back, we moved to town, and we lived in the back of our store, which was on 211 Northwest Davis Street. And that September, I started school at Couch School. So I finished my seventh and eighth grade at Couch School.