<Begin Segment 6>

HH: At what point in your life did have, meet your wife and eventually get married?

TM: Well, that, I met her, even before we bought the farm, while I was still working for Lou... want to hear a funny story?

HH: Sure.

TM: [Laughs] I don't know if you remember in the Life magazine, where in the very center of the Life magazine there was a picture of a 442nd guy. One guy with no legs and another guy with no eyes, do you remember that one?

HH: Yes.

TM: Well, those two guys came to Philadelphia. And I don't know who arranged the reception, but the reception was held at the International House. At that time, it was on Walnut Street, I think. And they had a reception, really the reception was for those two guys. But I went, I showed up there, and when young people get together, you get a party going, right? And Yuri showed up there, and we were playing some kind of a game. And Yuri showed up there with a hat with a goofy feather on it, that's what did it.

HH: [Laughs] She was someone that you couldn't miss.

TM: Yeah, at that time. I don't know whether she still has that hat or not. And then she disappeared. She went as a babysitter, I guess, for the president of Drexel, up into the Poconos, and I didn't know where the heck she disappeared to. After a while, she came back, and then I got to know her a little better. Went, oh yeah. We were picking peaches on the Barton Farm. And VJ Day occurred. And so at that point, it was a vacation, everybody quit working. And that day I decided to go find Yuri, and I went all the way down to Essington. And you know, when you don't know how you're going to get there, I was following, I think, Woodland Avenue or something. That thing wound up with nothing but just a streetcar going down. So then I eventually got down to Essington, and the first time I ever went to see her, no restaurants were open. So I wound up down there, and her mother fed me. And she fed me... well, so she and watermelons, I don't know what I got that day, but she liked osushi, she liked watermelons. So I was sure that I was going to get osushi and watermelon. She was living there. It was one of those government housing projects.

HH: How long did you court before you eventually...

TM: Well, we got married in '46. And would be forty-eight years and twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Forty-eight years and four days now.

HH: Wow. You just celebrated your anniversary a couple days ago.

TM: Yeah. We went out to Hanover and we didn't know where we were going, but we wound up in Hanover and meal and family, they joined us for... we called and said, "Hey, how about having dinner with us?" We get there and then we had dinner, and they paid for it. We invited them and they paid for it, how about that? And Grace and Hiroshi were trying to get married at the same time, except, you know, Grace is much more, she gets are way a lot more than I do. So they got married one month ahead of us. And Isamu came back about that time, and Isamu started making some noises, and Mom said, "No, no. No more weddings this year." [Laughs]

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.