Oral History Program Wataru Misaka Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Sarah Langsdon 14 August 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Wataru Misaka Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Sarah Langsdon 14 August 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Misaka, Wataru, an oral history by Lorrie Rands and Sarah Langsdon, 14 August 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Wataru Misaka August 14, 2014 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Wataru Misaka, conducted by Lorrie Rands and Sarah Langsdon on August 14, 2014. Wataru “Wat” Misaka was born in Ogden, the oldest son of Fusaichi “Ben” and Tatsuyo Misaka. He shares the story of how his parents immigrated to the United States, his experiences growing up in Ogden’s Japan-town, and his time playing college and professional basketball. Also present are Shinji Ichida, and Raymond and Yo Uno. LR: It’s August 14, 2014. We are in the Waterstradt Room in the Stewart Library at Weber State University. We are talking with Wat Misaka and Raymond Uno about their life histories here in Ogden. My name is Lorrie Rands and Sarah Langsdon is operating the camera. Also present is Shinji Ichida and Raymond’s wife, Yo. Again, thank you guys so much for being here. Wat, let’s start with you. If you can just start with when and where you were born. WM: Well, I was born on 25th Street, December 21, 1923, the same place where my two brothers were born and, well, actually we were born in the Dee Hospital but both my parents died in the Dee Hospital, so Ogden is not the only place that I’ve known because when I moved I just moved to Salt Lake, and except for the two years that I was in the service, I’ve been a Utahn all my life. Kind of the same way with my younger brothers who both have passed away. Most recently my brother Tats, who was next to me, his funeral was a week ago. LR: I’m so sorry. WM: I’m all alone now and I feel kind of lonesome but I have lived almost a hundred years, yes. 2 LR: So, where on the street did you live? WM: Well, lower 25th Street. When I was born we lived in, I think the address was 125 or 128 because it’s even number on the north side of the street. I don’t know exactly when, but I think it was in early 1930s we moved just a half a block up the street just east of Lincoln, the address was 208, and we lived in the back in the basement of a barber shop. My father was a barber and he operated a barbershop. That’s kind of what he came to the United States for; he was working on a farm and he didn’t like farming and so he came to the United States and about the only jobs that were around were either working on farms or working on the railroad. But he didn’t like either one so he learned how to be a barber and he stayed in town; never did work on the farm. LR: So, growing up on 25th Street and just in that lower part of Ogden, what was that like for you? WM: Well, it was what I thought was normal, I didn’t know anything else. Of course going out at night was kind of forbidden so we always stayed, after dark we always stayed home. We had a cousin that lived, ran a farm out in North Ogden on 2nd Street right where the Depot is now. In fact, just before the war, they had to—what is that they say—imminent domain? The government took over his land and they had moved their farm and so he moved farther down in Slaterville. But for, I don’t know how many years, that was probably late thirties when they had to move, and I think he had that farm since before the turn of the century and that was the only place that I knew where to work, because to keep me off the streets during summer vacation, my mother sent me out to help on the farm. So I 3 learned how to drive a truck when I was thirteen and helped my cousin out on the farm until I turned—all the summer vacations before I went to school. Of course, by this time I went to Weber High and had a part-time job so I stayed in town during the summer vacations, but that’s the only life I knew was going to school and working on a farm in the summer and staying out of trouble; never staying out after dark. LR: So what schools did you attend here in Ogden? WM: Well, grade school was Grant. That’s on Grant Avenue and where? 22nd Street? 23rd Street? Somewhere right there. So, I remember that well because you’d always get a good square look at Ben Lomond going to school in the mornings and that’s a sight that’s just forever remembered. LR: That’s the mountain? WM: That’s the mountain, yes. And of course I just went there for eight years, same school, and then went to Central Junior High School, which was just up the street, which was really convenient because it was between Adams and Jefferson up on 25th. SI: Madison and 25th. WM: Yes. That was junior high school and then went to high school at the new high school because, let’s see, when was that? I think the first graduating class of it was 1938 or something. So, that’s the only high school that I knew. The old high school was on the corner of Monroe and 25th and I think they used that as Central Junior for a few years. 4 LR: You mentioned just a second ago going to Grant and the fact that you remember that visual of Ben Lomond. Why do you think that sticks in your head? WM: I don’t know. It’s such a beautiful mountain, you know. In fact, I think that’s the basis for the—one of the movie company’s logos is Mount Ben Lomond. LR: What year did you graduate from high school, then? WM: High school in 1941. LR: And after you graduated, what did you do? WM: After working on a farm I enrolled at Weber. My mother says, “I really want you to go to college, but we can’t afford to.” By then my father had passed away, so to make a living—my mother didn’t have any kind of skills, but she learned how to barber so she became a lady barber over on 25th Street. She says, “I want you to go to school but I can’t afford to send you, but if you go to Weber you could live at home and if you find a part-time job that will pay for your tuition and books we can probably get along okay.” So, that’s what we did, that’s all I knew was from Lincoln and 25th up to Adams and 25th. I’d go to school before eight in the morning and I’d come home about six at night and do my lessons and whatnot, cause I carried twenty hours—I carried a pretty heavy load trying to get my engineering degree, so that taxed my brain a little bit. LR: So you started going to Weber before the war started? WM: Yes. LR: Okay. So, when Pearl Harbor happened, did that change you and were you able to still go to school? 5 WM: Yes, President Dixon, he suggested that all of—there were quite a few Japanese Americans going to school at Weber and he had told everyone to stay home because they didn’t know what kind of reception we’d have and if there’d be any troubles and so on. I didn’t get the message and I went to school and they said, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here.” So I came home for the day but most of the rest of us went back the next day. Of course, President Dixon said, “You should stay home for at least this week.” But I don’t remember what day of the week that was; it seems like it was early in the week, like a Tuesday or a Wednesday. I guess Pearl Harbor—that happened on Sunday I guess, so it must have been that Monday when we went to school. I came home but I went back the next day; there wasn’t much of a clash at that time. I was kind of concerned with—so basketball had just started and we had this one fellow that was, I think he came to Weber from Hawaii to play football but he was also a basketball player so he was out for the basketball team. I was kind of concerned about him and he went home a day or so after that because he was worried about his parents and so on. I never did see him again. I tell you that was a long time ago. LR: You said that you went into the service. When did that happen? When did you go into the service? WM: Well, that was after I went to the University of Utah. Of course, early on Japanese Americans who were in the service were fired; I don’t know, is that what you called it? Discharged? It wasn’t an honorable discharge either, but they were kind of kicked out of the service so there weren’t any Japanese Americans in the service for two to three years and I guess it was. I got my draft notice—my 6 mother handed that draft notice to me the day after, the day I stepped off the train from New York. University of Utah had been playing in a basketball tournament back in New York and the day we got home she handed me my greetings and of course I kind of expected it by then because people were being drafted about that time. LR: I’m going to go back just a little bit. So, you were playing basketball for Weber State. Did that change any after Pearl Harbor? Were you still allowed to play on the team? WM: Not an awful lot, and that’s a part that I’m so, so grateful for is that all my playing days before and during and after the war, my teammates were just so supportive; I couldn’t ask for better teammates. That’s what made it a real happy experience. I know my brother in high school, he had good teammates but he ran into a lot of crowd problems playing for Ogden High and I guess also…did he play for Weber? Baseball for Weber? RU: I think he did. WM: Yes. See, he’s quite a few years younger than I am so Raymond knows a lot more about my brother in those days than I did. I was busy going to school and working and making sure that my family was okay because my dad was gone. Tats was taking all of the brunt of just nastiness that was going around. LR: How did the war affect the businesses that—the Japanese businesses there on 25th or within Ogden—that you remember? WM: Oh, it didn’t affect ours too much because my mother’s customers were mainly Japanese. Of course I wasn’t part of the money or the business part and I was 7 never home during business hours anyway, so I really don’t know how that was going. She never did complain that business was bad or anything. It never was really great because she was kind of an amateur. LR: She obviously did well enough to maintain a lifestyle. WM: Yes. She did great. SI: They survived. They survived. WM: Yes. I got no complaints. SL: I want to know where Japan-town was. WM: Well, we kind of lived in the middle of it. Well, not the middle of it, the edge of it. There was only one other family on 25th Street between us and the train station and most of the others were up around Grant Avenue and around 24th Street. There was rooming houses and there was, across the street was toyshop by the Ochi’s—not a toy shop but a, what do you call that? You know, like, things from Japan? Imported things? Pots and pans and, well not pots and pans, flower pots and things. In fact, they used to play that Japanese game, Go, where they put these little black and white stones on the checker board-like, and they used to play that in his front in the summertime and in the winter they’d move inside. These old guys who didn’t have a job, they’d go and play that just like chess. SI: Let me interject. What he’s talking about is gyonarabi, which means “five in a row.” That was the game. The idea was to get five whites or five blacks in a row and you won the game. 8 RU: The demographics of Japan-town is 23rd Street to 26th Street, Wall Avenue to Kiesel, and that’s where you find the concentration of businesses and people that lived there. WM: That’s the same thing I told you. LR: So was there a sense of community within Japan-town when you were growing up? WM: Yes, I think so, yes. You know, a lot of the—you got my parents and see like that: their English was pretty poor. Especially early on, like when they’d go to the grocery store they had a tough time telling them what they wanted. Of course, unlike right now, now you go and it’s self-service in the grocery stores, but you’d go and tell the clerk what you wanted and then they’d go pick it up off the shelves and stuff like that. There’s a lot of stories about some of these immigrants, couldn’t speak English, and they were squawking like a chicken when they wanted some eggs and things like that. That was always a kind of humbling experience because usually they’d go in and you get waited on last, you know, and if there were non-Japanese that would come in the store, even while you’re there, they’d usually get waited on first; that was kind of a normal thing. Some of the more belligerent, though, would object to that but the rest just kind of took it in stride. SI: See, and that’s the term, shi kata ganai, I told you about shi kata ganai, which means they can’t be helped, or live with it, que sera sera, that kind of thing. So, that’s what Wat’s talking about. They put up with it and they say, “Well, that’s the way it is. Live with it.” 9 LR: When did that, or did that, ever change? That, you know, being waited on last: did that ever change? WM: Oh, yes. There was a time after the war it ended. A lot of that, you know they changed, maybe the butcher shops stayed the same because you had to go to the counter and tell them what kind of meat that you wanted and the butcher had to wait on you to do that, so you can just wait until your turn. But regular grocery stores they soon went to the self-service, so you get your basket or whatever and go pick whatever you wanted off the shelf. LR: Right. So after you were at the University of Utah, you went into the Service. When were you discharged from the Service? WM: Well, let’s see. I was in almost exactly two years. So, I went in in 1944 and came out in 1946, I think it was in June. So, it was just at the start of summer vacation, I came home and just got ready to enroll into fall quarter. LR: Did you go back to the University of Utah at that point? WM: I went back to the University of Utah, yes. SI: You noticed he said “quarter?” LR: Yes. SI: Back in those days it was quarters. WM: Oh, yes. LR: I remember. I’m old enough to remember that. SI: Oh, really? WM: Yes, well, tuition was only like $35. That’s for winter quarter. LR: When did—or did you ever come back to Ogden to live? 10 WM: I never did. Seems like my life was, you know, pre-University of Utah in Ogden and after that I was Salt Lake. Because I went away to school and I never did come back to Ogden to live. The summer vacations that first year when I was a freshman and sophomore, you know, I came home for that time between quarters but even then after a while I’d stay in Salt Lake. I kind of feel like a displaced person as far as being an Ogdenite is concerned. LR: So, when you would come home for those summer breaks, did you notice a change within Japan-town? Or was it beginning to disperse? WM: No, it changed. Before the war and after the war there was a big change, but change was kind of semi-gradual in between times. Things changed quite a bit, actually. By the end of the war I know that, well, I went to school in the first grade at Grant and that’s when my name was changed to Wat. See my given name is Wataru. Of course, a lot of Japanese Americans never did change, didn’t have an English name; they’d have a Japanese name. Whatever name they’d end up using would be kind of a nickname or an abbreviation or something like that. A lot of the names that you see the Nisei Japanese Americans using are just contractions of the Japanese name. Like “Yo,” you know. When I went to school, of course, the people wouldn’t move very much. So, I actually went to school and got to be friends with these three other boys in the first grade and we went to school all the way through Ogden High School; twelve years together. Right from the first day, one of the guy says, “I don’t know what your first name is, but you’re Wat.” So I was known as Wat from then and that name really stuck. A lot of people only know me by that and they don’t know 11 me by my real name. They say, “How do you spell that?” But anyway, that’s the long story of it, of the name change, and so for six years I was Wataru and for eighty-four years I’ve been Wat. SL: How long was your mom still in business? WM: Well let’s see: she died in 1954, and 1939 was when my dad died, so what’s that—it’s like fifteen years. SI: Yes, I can’t remember your dad cutting hair. Your mom was the only one that ever cut my hair. SL: Was there a community center or a place where the Japanese gathered in Japan-town? WM: No. A lot of people would, not a lot but some people, would gather in places like the barber shop because some of our customers were out-of-town people who worked on a farm and stuff like that. They come to town, they get a haircut, and they—we also had baths, so some of the bachelors that worked on the railroad and lived close by, they’d come and take a bath and stuff at night after work. SI: Might mention the Buddhist church was right nearby. WM: Yes, the Buddhist church is—and then we used to have festivals and things, and they held that a lot at, what was that Lyceum Theater across the street or Star Theater on 25th on the south side of the street? Now it’s just almost directly across the street from our place, and so I knew a lot of out-of-town friends and relatives would be busy during those festival times. Of course, most of those festivals were on Sunday so they couldn’t go anyplace on Sunday, but…yeah, 12 those Obon and stuff like that. I remember people would pack a lunch and stuff and they’d have a big program and it’d be an all-day affair. SI: Yes, he’s talking about the Buddhist church having these gatherings on Lincoln. They would close it off and have dances and celebrate. LR: Oh, okay. Did they have different names or different functions? SI: Yes, because the one that’s on North Street in North Ogden, the Buddhist church, they have what they call bon odori, which is the main celebration dance kind of stuff, and what they do is do the traditional bon odori, which is a dance of celebration. SL: You mentioned Lyceum, Paramount, Egyptian, Northview; where did you go sit? WM: I can’t remember. I think most of the time I was sitting the back row. SI: In the balcony. WM: In the balcony, yes. SI: Egyptian, when the war broke out, that’s where we had to sit, up in the balcony after the war broke out. And you couldn’t even go to the Orpheum because KLO was there. WM: Oh, is that right? Well, you guys really had a bad time, huh? I don’t remember that. SI: You know, back when the war broke out, well like I told you in the other interview, KLO was one of the only stations in Ogden and they were afraid that the Japanese community would do something to bomb KLO or whatever, so Orpheum Theater was not allowed for Japanese people to go see a show. WM: Oh, really. 13 SI: The same way with Pineview Dam. We couldn’t go up there because they were afraid we’d bomb. The Pineview Dam would flood Ogden. So those two areas I can distinctly remember big signs saying, “Not Allowed.” That was during, you know 1941 through 1945, around there. But that was expected and, I don’t know about expected, but the old term, shi kata ganai, “I will live with it.” You know, that’s the way it is. WM: I was too busy going to school, I guess. SI: In those days, you were in Salt Lake. SL: Were there any restaurants or stores you couldn’t go to after Pearl Harbor? SI: Yes, I don’t really think they discriminated all that much after the war started. There was enough Japanese-owned stores that you could survive as far as necessities were concerned so we got by. Wat talks about his mother going grocery shopping and very limited ability to speak the English language. I can remember going with Grandma the same way. I would be pretty much interpreter for Grandma getting whatever groceries she needed. I’m sure Oscar or his brother Tats, did the same thing: went with your mom and interpreted or at least related in English what they needed, that was the norm for us young guys when you were kids as growing up. SL: Do you know when, do you remember when your parents came to Utah? WM: Yes, my father landed in Seattle. I think we got a, what do you call those deals that shows your names and so on? My father’s and—we got a copy of that and it shows 1902. LR: So, what brought your dad to Ogden? 14 WM: Well, we come from a little island in that inland sea in Japan and, that’s where my mother came from and my dad came from the same place, although my dad is like eighteen years or so older than she was, so he came when he was nineteen. I don’t even know if he knew her, that she was around when he came here. But they came from the same place in Japan and her uncle, my mother’s uncle, was a fairly successful farmer here in North Ogden on 2nd Street, and so I guess there’s two things that you have to have when you come: you have to have $50 cash and you have to have some sponsor. My mother’s uncle was my dad’s sponsor, so that’s why he came to Ogden. But he didn’t want to work on a farm, that’s why he left Japan, so he didn’t ever stay on the farm; he came out into town and I think he stayed in a boarding house or something and got a job or learned how to be a barber and opened his barber shop. I think he worked as an apprentice for a while, but this is in nineteen-o-something. I guess in those days there were still cowboys carrying around six-shooters on the streets. I know there were plenty of broken beer bottles in the alleyways. SI: That’s for sure. LR: So, when did your mother come to the United States? WM: She came in 1922. LR: Okay. WM: Twenty years after. LR: When did your parents marry? WM: Oh, just before that. He went back to the—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t one of those picture bride type things, but he went back to Japan and married my mother and 15 he was gone for the good part of a year I guess. After he got married he—I don’t think he came back, what else, I think is a few months in between—I don’t know the exact timing, we never did, no one never did say anything. You know, in looking up our genealogy and stuff like that, we found out that my mother was married before and her husband had died and possibly that’s when he went back and found out about that. I think he went back to get married and he went with my cousin, that was my mother’s uncle’s son. He was born here, but educated in Japan, and kind of ran the farm. SI: Is that Yori? WM: Yori, yes. SL: What were your parent’s names? WM: My father’s English name was Ben, his Japanese name was Fusaichi. I don’t know if you’re a horse-racing addict or whatever, but the Kentucky Derby was won by a horse name Fusaichi a half-dozen years ago. That was surprising. I didn’t even know that horse was running until I saw that name, I says, “I know that name.” LR: What was your mother’s name? WM: My mother’s name? Tatsuyo. LR: Thank you. SI: His mother and father are buried next to my grandma and grandpa. RU: You haven’t got anything about his basketball. That’s an important thing. WM: That’s the thing, we’re almost related. He’s my godfather, I guess, because he— his grandfather named all three of us kids in our family. 16 SI: Oh, really. I didn’t know that! WM: Yes. And all three of our Japanese names are just one Kanji. You know, a lot of the names are two and stuff like that; all three of our names were one Kanji. Of course, Wataru, that’s pretty common. But Tatsumi, the way you write it is not common at all. And well, Osamu was pretty common. SI: Gee, I can’t remember if he came from Ogden. WM: Where did he come from? He wasn’t an Ogdenite. SI: No, no, he came from California, I think. WM: Yes. RU: It’s Washington, I think. SI: Washington. WM: Oh, was that during the war or after? Relocation? SI: After. WM: Oh, I see. LR: Okay, so let me ask this quickly: how did you get involved playing basketball at Weber State? WM: Oh. Well, there were some old Ogden High teammates that were already on the team and of course I played two years with this fellow named Max Jensen. He originally came from, well I think he lived on 5th Street or something. He went to North, Mound Fort Junior High School on 12th Street and came to Ogden High the same year that I did and I played with him for four years, two years at Ogden and two years at Weber. We really got to be good teammates, he was really a nice guy, intelligent kid; he was in engineering also. When we graduated from 17 Weber, he went into the Navy or something and went to school in Colorado. In fact, he was going to play for University of Colorado when I was playing for Utah. So we got to really be good friends. LR: So, did he help you get on the Weber State team, then? WM: Yes, well, I didn’t need any help at Weber because there were some teammates, they graduated a year before at Ogden, that were playing for Weber and so I already knew a few of the players that were on the team. Of course it was just natural for me because that’s where I was, my part-time job was at the gym, that Weber gym that was on the corner there. I used to help take a turn at being lifeguard at the swimming pool and did the laundry for the—they had kind of a public locker and showers and a lot of businessmen would come to play handball and racquetball after work, and some of them wanted to work out and they’d do that at the gym. I know that my brother Oscar got a job there and worked there during the summertime, and we used to play ping pong out there in the front. That’s how I got to know the Weber College President; his son, John Dixon, was the same grade with me. In fact, we played football together at Central Junior and he went on to be a physician and I guess he actually goes up, vice president of the university in charge of the medical end of it. What do you call that? Not human services but, life services or something, anyway. He got to be Vice President of the University of Utah. Anyway, he and John got to be good friends with Arnie Ferrin because Arnie was commuting to University of Utah and so was John, so they’d ride together going to school at Utah when they were undergraduates. 18 RU: At Weber College you were the Most Valuable Player at the Conference Championship. Kind of important. WM: Oh, yes. Well, it was kind of a fluke. You know, you just happen to get hot during the Championship Game and so they notice. Max was really the star, he was all the way through high school; he was the high scorer of the region and I was always supporting him. We got to know each other’s moves and stuff so well that, never made a bad pass. SI: You know, Wat’s a little modest, but during the Weber junior college days he was the scorer, he made lots of points, but when he got up to University of Utah, he was mainly the point guard. His thing was guarding people so the defensive—he was the defensive start in University of Utah. But you know at Weber State or at least Weber junior college he was the scoring star. And he says, you know, his best friend or his teammate was the best player, but he’s a little modest because he did very well, too. But that was during Weber’s junior college days which was all down there on 25th Street. LR: So Wat, is there anything else you’d like to add? RU: At University of Utah you played in NCAA and also the NIT. WM: Those are the only two national championships that the University of Utah ever won. LR: When you were playing. WM: Those were the only two years that I played. It happens that way. LR: That’s awesome. RU: Then you went to the NBA. 19 WM: Oh yeah, that was kind of a failure. SI: First Japanese or Asian that was drafted into the NBA. RU: First minority in the National Basketball Association. LR: That’s kind of important. WM: Well, they found me out right away. SI: But being so short, he did a lot of good stuff in basketball, he really did. WM: You guys are my biggest fans, so… RU: He also is a good bowler and a good golfer. SI: And anything athletic, he’s good at. WM: Dixon is one of the most famous persons that Weber’s ever had. He later became a representative back in Washington for Utah, and that was after he got to be President of Utah State. That was John’s father, Henry Aldous, he’s really a great guy. My good friend that I was going to school with named Roy Yoshioka, went to California, he went to Los Angeles and he got put in camp at Poston, Arizona. All the time that he was gone and so on, I kept up correspondence with him because he’s one of my best friends at that time and he wrote to me and says, “If you can get me a sponsor, I can come out of camp.” And so I talked to Dr. Dixon about the possibility of his sponsoring Roy and he said, “Oh sure. I want to do something.” I didn’t find out until a lot later that he thought that that was a good thing to do and so he sponsored other people to come out of camps unknown to me; I didn’t ever go back to him or anything. So Roy came out of camp from Poston and worked at Weber for a while because John sponsored him. That was part of the sponsorship—that you would have a job for them so 20 that he can be independent and wouldn’t have to rely on the state for his subsistence. LR: Well Wat, thank you so much for your time. WM: Well, thank you. I just kind of rambled on here, didn’t I? LR: That’s all right.