<Begin Segment 3>

AI: So then, you were, let's see, about how old were you when your father got tired of his job and decided to start farming? When was that?

SH: I was very young. I was probably three or four.

AI: And, and that, was that the time when he decided to move to Bellevue? Or how did your parents...

SH: My dad lived in Seattle, and when he decided to go to farming he moved to a community, a little community, at that time called Sunnydale. I don't know if the area still goes by that name, it was just a little farming community between Des Moines and South Park. He farmed there for, I would say 1928. He moved from there to... no, yeah, 1928, he moved to Bellevue. And he lived there 'til he passed away. And I lived there in Bellevue until evacuation.

AI: Can you tell a little bit about what it was like living in Bellevue in those days?

SH: Well, there was probably twenty-five families, I recall. And eventually they started a Japanese Association Hall, all made by voluntary labor, no public money in it at all. There were two or three farmers that were carpenters in Japan, and so, without hiring any, any other help outside of the Japanese community, they built the hall. And then a few years later they built a two-room Japanese language school. And it was a center of activity for the Japanese community. The Japanese language school was built right next door to it a few years later. I went to, grade school days, I went to the daytime, but as us kids grew older and started working, couldn't go on Saturdays -- there used to be Saturday language, Japanese language school -- so they decided to have evening classes. So, when I got into high school, I went to evening classes. The instructor came from Seattle and, I think it was a good thing. Without that language school, I wouldn't have been able to converse with my parents that well.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.