Towards the end I remember once when my mother was in the hospital and I thought my father and I should go visit her there. He didn't want to go, which I thought was a little strange. It was a little drizzly outside, so I got out the North Face windbreaker I'd given him. When we got to the hospital, White Memorila, I think, I had to help get the jacket on him and zip it up. There's was a short walk from the parking structure to the hospital itself. Every step he took was pained and labored; I hadn't realized how weak he'd become. That was why he didn't want to go. By this time it had become a herculean task for him, but he made it. He was glad to see Mom when we finally got to the room. Later I took him to lunch at a Ramen restaurant in what is now the Mitsuwa shopping center in Little Tokyo. He enjoyed it. I kept that jacket and I remember that time when I see it.
He had become weary of the
world. He told me how miserable he was. All of his friends were gone,
and everything was painful now. It was such a change from the tough guy
I'd known, who never complained and wasnt bothered by pain.
My
father grew up on a farm near one of the gates of Camp Pendleton.
At least that is the second place. There was another place where his
family lived before that. Both places are covered by subdivisions now.
Even the lake near the last place is gone.
Dad had a favorite
dog, a spitz, that he always talked about. He had to abandon him when
his family was sent away to camp. I thought it was strange that he
never got another dog until long afterwards. With some exceptions, the
dogs he liked were always ones with twisted personalities, with
definite anti-social qualities. Morgan was a Miniature Schnauzer he got
from his niece. Morgan had been the runt of the litter, and was trying
to make up for it. The last one is Sneakie (real name Subie) who is
some kind of ersatz Australian Shepherd. She was a classic shy dog, who
was, and is, fearful of everything and basically lived as a wild
animal, always ready to bite to protect her privacy. She was declared
untrainable by a professional dog trainer, but I eventually caught her
enough times, at great personal risk, so that she became tame enough to
hold. In his last years my father enjoyed sitting with her, although I
always had to catch her so that she would do that.
On the
other hand, Harley, a super-sized Australian Shepherd, was one of the
best dogs I have known. My parents got him as a rescued dog somewhere
in Pasadens. Harley was good-natured and friendly, which was a definite
exception.
My father loved any kind of machinery. He said his
ideal life would be to live on a big farm with an equipment shed full
of farm machinery. In his early days he belonged to the Buzzards
chapter of the Rosetta Timing Society, which participated in time
trials. I saw a picture of him racing his jalpy once, but the program
the picture was in was destroyed when rain leaked into the garage.
Later he raced go-karts and built a ski boat completely from scratch.
Another
phase was dirt bikes, which steadily escalated in size and power. He
sustained a chest injury on his Suzuki 400 that he thought bothered him
later in life. Later he got into road bikes and he used to go touring
around L.A with my mother on the back.
When he was young Dad
took shop classes in high school and wanted to be an aircraft mechanic.
During the Concentration Camp experience he tried to learn to operate
as many different kinds of machinery as possible. He volunteered to go
work on one of the construction groups that built Posten. Among other
thing he operated a D8 Catepillar using a drag chain with another cat
to clear the land for farming near the water. Later he drove a
semi-truck that delivered supplies to the camp and on the side
boot-legged liquor to the Indian reservation.
When the loyalty
questionnaire came out he answered no to question no. 27, that he would
not serve in the armed forces since he had been thrown out of the Sand
Diego Marine Corps Depot when he tried to volunteer after Pearl Harbor.
He answered yes to question 28 which was about loyalty, but did give
some other heart burn because of the poor wording. Unlike some of the
other camps, answers to this questionnaire and protests in general were
not treated with severity. Also, I believe my father said that the
sheriff from his home town vouched for him. Later when the government
started drafting from the camps, my father went for his medical check
at the induction center. The doctors thought that he had taken a big
dose of soy sauce, as was the common practice, to simulate high blood
pressure and become 4F. They kept him overnight to retake his blood
pressure the next day and found that it was still high. They told him
he would probably die in his 40s, but he made it to 83. That plus the
early deaths of his brothers caused him to be unprepared for old age,
since he never thought he would live to be old.
After the war
he lived on Skid Row in downtown L. A. since that was all he could
afford and probably one of the few places that a Japanese American
could find a place. He was still bitter long after that it was other
Japanese Americans who robbed him and took everything he had.
Eventually he got a break from a white guy who taught him to be an
automotive machinist. Later he got a break from Sam Miyakawa who told
him he could use some space in his commercial garage to start a machine
shop. This he did in a partnership, and it was where he worked till he
retired.
My father liked working on engines, so he was
probably one of the few people happy in his job. The shop found a niche
rebuilding forklift and tug motors, with occasional auto engines for
Sam’s shop and others. He said about half the time he wasn’t paid for
his work, or he had to use a collection agency.
The work was
tough but it was probably good for him and probably kept him alive
longer than if he hadn’t done it. These days people pay large fees to
lift steel in fancy health spas. My father was doing that everyday in
his shop. He thought that the heavy work ruined his body. His
generation didn’t make a connection between health and exercise. After
he retired, his health went down dramatically. The use of pneumatic
tools, plus all the motorcycles, go-karts, and racing cars destroyed
his hearing. Towards the end he was pretty much deaf, especially since
he didn’t want to use his hearing aids, but I don’t think they did much
anyway. Diabetes, brought on from genetics and a severe sweet tooth,
destroyed his vision. With sight and hearing diminished, and all of his
friends gone, my father became very isolated.
Since vehicles
were his life, losing his drivers license probably did him in. His
vision, judgement, and reactions were poor and it was probably the best
for society. There were sometimes when he scared the heck out of me and
thought he was going to him some pedestrians. He had always defined his
life in terms of machines, and driving was his last solace. Driving him
around was a trial since he was very frustrated and complained and
cursed now that he was no longer in control.
Last Update: 26 March 2009
Web Author: Doug Ikemi