MATSUMOTO​,​ Masao and Shizuko

After finishing higher elementary school, I came over soon after — as a stowaway. The first time, I left from Kobe but was caught before I even reached Yokkaichi. I was held in detention for a day and fined twenty yen. The second time, I succeeded. I was sixteen, and I came on an Osaka Shosen passenger ship, a direct line from Yokohama to Seattle. But in Seattle, I wasn’t allowed to land. So the ship went on to Tacoma, and that night — this was during Prohibition, you know — I bribed the watchman with whisky. We got him drunk and slipped off the ship while he wasn’t paying attention. Once you set foot on land and reached town, you were safe. After that, I worked for four years at a Western-style restaurant run by Japanese people. There were no holidays — no Obon, no New Year’s, not even Sundays. I worked from six in the morning until seven at night. Still, they treated me kindly there. My first twenty days’ pay was forty-five dollars, and the next month they gave me sixty. They told me they’d raise it by five dollars every month, and after a while, I earned a full wage. A first-class waiter made ninety dollars — same as a cook. In 1930, I got a job on a train run by an executive of the Great Northern Railroad. That same October, I came to New York — but before that, I went to Chicago. Since I could cook, I looked for restaurant work, but the pay was too low. So I thought, “Since I’ve come this far, I might as well go all the way to New York — the great city of the world.” And that’s how I got here. At that time, most of the jobs for Japanese in New York were domestic service — housework. For about seven months I couldn’t find any work at all. Finally, I found a cheap job, and though I didn’t have a residence, I said I could cook. From then on, almost all my jobs in New York were household work. On November 8, 1941, the FBI came, and I was taken to Ellis Island. I stayed there until the following April, and then I was interned at Fort George in Maryland. On June 8, I was sent back to Japan on a repatriation ship. We left New York on June 18, 1942, and arrived at Tateyama on August 2. We came back the long way around — through the Indian Ocean. In 1943, I was drafted after my physical examination — I was thirty-five — and I was sent to Manchuria. I’ve seen NHK’s American Stories about Tacoma, Washington, and based on my experience, I find some of what they show surprising — maybe it was different depending on the place, I suppose. Now I live quietly in the countryside, one house here, another there. When I meet the local children, they call out “Hello, hello!” to me so cheerfully. It impresses me. When I was a child, we used to chase around the Chinese peddlers who came selling things, calling them “Chan-chan boy.” I never did that myself, but the others did. If you ask me, there’s no country in the world as good as America. Life here is much easier. This interview is part of the DMHJNY's new exhibit Issei: Portraits Of The First-Generation Japanese New Yorkers which is on view here: https://www.historyofjapaneseinny.org/issei/