<Begin Segment 62>

JA: And what were your first impressions when you saw your farm for the first time upon return?

MH: Well, it was a great shock, couldn't believe it. How anything could be left like that for us to come home and face. It wasn't as hard for me as it was to my parents, because they were the one that had cleared the land, built up that land to make it to a farming ground, and they worked real, real hard on it. And so it really affected, I think, all the Isseis that had come back that way. And as far as we, my brother, and I and my husband, we three decided we'll clean up this mess and see what we can do about getting all our family home. They came home same time, but we left them at Seattle at the Congregational Church with my in-laws because they couldn't come home to Bellevue yet, it wasn't quite ready for them. So we, my brother and the three of us, worked real hard for a couple weeks and temporarily we were able to move into the house.

All the windows were broken, every room the wallpapers are torn, the linoleum was all pulled out in a mess. And, of course, the outside was... the weeds were about 6 feet tall, every piece of ground outside, and the greenhouse we had, all the glasses were all broken down and couldn't even use the greenhouse when we got home. And so it was nothing -- and the well was, of course, full of garbage. Everything you could think of was in that well, that we drank the water out of, so it took my brother and me about three days to clean up that mess completely out of the well so that maybe we can use the water, and so we were kind of able to use the water. Before then, we had to haul all our water, we borrowed it from the service station that was down in Midlakes so we took buckets, barrels, and everything and got water from there for our daily use. For three of us out there, rest were in Seattle, so that helped a lot. So, but it was a terrific mess.

<End Segment 62> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.