<Begin Segment 2>

AI: Well, before we get up to the wartime, I wanted to ask you to go back over some of your childhood memories, about when the time you were still in grade school. And thinking back, you described in your first interview that you were a poor family, but at that -- as a child, you didn't realize that you were poor.

FY: That's right. The, our neighbors were all "poor," quote/unquote. We were able to eat, but most Asians' diet was much more simpler than most Caucasian. We required very little meat, and the vegetables out in the farm there was plentiful. And so the means of living was very simple. The house we lived in were all rented, and the rent was very cheap. I know our house, we rented it for seven dollars a month.

AI: Let me back up here, and just to set the time and the place again, can you tell us what year you were born?

FY: I was born in 1923, November 26th.

AI: And when you were describing out in the farmland, that was when you were living in the area of South Park; is that right?

FY: Yes. I was born in Seattle on Dearborn Street, and we moved out to South Park because I was not very healthy, and the doctor suggested that we move off in the country.

AI: And so that's why you were describing the farmland at that time.

FY: Yes, yes.

AI: Well, I think you had mentioned something about when you were a child that you and a friend of yours would sometimes go to neighbors and take orders for vegetables.

FY: Oh, yes. Well, while we were growing up, we were all -- again, since we were all poor, we were on the same pond, we didn't know what, how the rich people lived. We were not given any allowances, so any kind of income we were to get, we had to do it on our own. I used to go to the golf link to caddy, and that was pretty good because I would make 90 cents. That's for 18 holes. On other days, Tony and I -- Italian friend of mine -- we would go into the Caucasian community in South Park and take orders from the housewives. And as an example, three bunches of radishes for a nickel, and heads of lettuce for two cents each, and on and on like that. And once we'd get the orders written down, then we would go to the farm and get our vegetables from other farmers. Now, Joe Desmond was the big farmer where most of the Isseis, where they worked. Now, because his, he had acres of farms, missing few heads of lettuce or radishes was not important. But we would get the vegetable, wash it, bunch it up, and we would take it over to the customers, and they would pay us a nickel or a dime, and we would make enough money to take a bus ride downtown -- four hours transfer -- with a four-hour transfer, so it cost a nickel only. And we can go to town and come back on the same nickel. We can go to a movie for a dime, and for a nickel, we'd get day-old pastry at the public market, and we'd get a whole, large bagful of it, so that's, that was a treat for our day.

We used to also dig worm. There used to be a worm man that used to come out. And I can't remember for sure; I think we got five -- we got a penny for five worms, so we'd spend several hours digging worms, and we might make as much as ten, twelve cents.

AI: So you had to be very imaginative to make some spending money as a child.

FY: Exactly. Now, my older brother, the oldest one, would go to Alaska during the summertime, cannery work, and he would earn, I believe it's like fifty dollars for the season. Of course, now, he wasn't too happy about it because he says he had to give all that money to the, to Dad if it goes into the pot, family pot. So most of us Niseis grew up supporting the family. The Niseis in town, where they had grocery stores or hotel business, most of the Nisei worked very hard, supporting their family.

AI: So it was just an expectation for you and your brothers that whatever money you made, you might have a little bit of spending money for yourself, but most of it would go into the family pot.

FY: That's right. That's right.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.