Born Tokutaro Hayashi with the 1940 census lists a Ramon Hayashi, born in Japan in 1902, living on Prentiss Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. Raymond T. Muramoto died July 26, 1988 in King County, Washington, at the age of 88. When he arrived in the US at age twenty, he probably picked the common American name “Raymond.” Most official documents call him Tokutaro Muramoto. It’s only the 1940 census and the promotional materials and articles about his radio work that list his last name as “Hayashi.” A petition for naturalization, October 12, 1955 gives a snapshot of his life at that time. “My full, true and correct name is – Raymond Tokutaro Muramoto. My occupation is – truck driver. … The name of my wife is Tsuruko Muramoto. … One child, Florence Reiko, female, born October 8, 1937.” His petition was approved. At some point after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Tokutaro was informed the government would send him to Japan. He asked his colleague Dick Osgood to intervene. An occasional voice actor and quiz master, Osgood had been broadcasting a series tied in with the war effort called March to Victory. Scripts for the show were supposedly vetted by six departments in Washington. Tokutaro might have thought Osgood had some influence but he couldn’t help. In his book, Osgood says Tokutaro “disappeared, presumably to a concentration camp in the west. No one at WXYZ ever saw Raymond again.”

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