<Begin Segment 4>

[Translated from Japanese]

AT: My house, well, we owned our house. When we talked to our friend, our hakujin friend, he said, "Oh, I live in the apartment now, so I can come, and Sam, I will watch it for you. So don't worry. Anytime." My husband said, "Oh, if you watch the house for us, then we will just leave everything behind." Then, he said, "I just have an apartment, and I will just live in your place and pay the rent for my apartment. I like your place because it's spacious." Well, Terao wasn't planning to receive anything. So, he just asked him to water the garden, and he had him water the garden. He had made a pond on this side, and the carps called gold carps, those, he went to ask him to change water for them, the tap water, once a month like this. He told us that he would call us once to twice a month. We didn't go into the camp. To Salt Laki, my cousin lived there. He told us, "Nothing good will come out if you went into the camp with three girls. I have rooms in my house, so you should come over here." I told him that we would discuss with our children just in case, and if they said all right, then we would accept his offer. They said that they would work if they could find places to work. The oldest one was old enough already. Her name was Fusako, and she had already graduated from high school, graduated from high school, and she went to college just for a little while and worked. She said that she would work and try to manage somehow. So, we said that we should do so. At that time, we just did as our children said instead of insisting our opinions, to Salt Laki, because my cousin was farming there. He said, "Oneesan, nothing good would happen if you took three children, girls, so why don't you bring them over?" We discussed with children then. Then, children said that they wanted to go. They said, "We will help you make living, yes, we want to go," so we went. Five years in Salt Laki.

DG: Did you go by car?

AT: Huh?

DG: Did you go by car?

AT: No, no, not by car...

TY: Was it by train?

AT: We went by train because we had our belongings. Baggage, we had to take casual wear, kimono and everything, right? Since we were a family of five. So...

TY: That's six, wasn't it? Including a boy.

AT: The boy said that he didn't care about his clothes. Anyway, the whole family was going, right? Then, we had to put stuff in the suitcases, and futon mattresses, there are sacks like this for futon, aren't there? We put them in those...

TY: You even took futon and all with you?

AT: Not all of them. They said that they had extra there if we didn't have enough. We took them with us.

TY: So, your husband's coworker from the Frye came to watch the house, right? And, you left all the furniture there.

AT: Yeah, we left all the furniture there. We left with nothing but the clothes we were wearing. Later on, we were asked if we wanted something. He said, "Sam, we'll send them to you," so we left things as they were. We didn't lose anything though. They took good care of it. But, it was still five years. The wife said that the curtains were torn, but I said, "All right. I don't care about the tears of the curtains." She washed them and mended those small tears of the curtains. I told her not to worry about the rest. She took good care of them. They watched the house because they didn't have children. We appreciated them for doing that at the time. And, we wrote all the taxes from here by writing, what, tickets. [Ed. note: Mrs. Terao meant "checks."] Our daughter... Terao couldn't do it because he didn't have the citizenship. But my daughter had the citizenship, so we had her write checks, and we all sent them, trying not to show that we did it, and we made payments, and returned. So, we just said, asked them to water the garden because we had made a Japanese garden. But, we didn't particularly think that the things turned bad because we weren't there. Over here, goldfish had grown big, and in the garden, trees had grown big, but you can't help that. We couldn't talk about that, so, well, they just weeded and made it nice.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.