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AI: Could you describe what a typical day would be like for you? Say, for example, when you were in high school, because it sounds like you had quite a bit of work to do at, on the farm and you had the school.

SH: Oh yes. When I was in high school, we worked, my younger sisters and I worked, even before going to school. I, my father passed away in 1940, so between, for a few years there I was taking a load of produce to Seattle before school. And, we all had to, I was no exception, every family in Bellevue that farmed, the Nisei, at the young age, all worked hard. There wasn't a family that didn't. And I think it didn't hurt 'em any to learn hard work. We had to start working at a very young age. Nowadays, I wouldn't think, I wouldn't think of telling my son, "Go take a truckload of produce to Seattle," when he was thirteen years old. But I used to do that from age thirteen, no driver's license. And I drove every, six days a week to take a load of produce into Seattle wholesale market, and made it home before, in time to go to school at nine o'clock.

AI: Then you'd go to school all day?

SH: Go to school all day and come back and then soon after school, start, help finish up for, to make the next day's load and load it up and work until nine, ten o'clock at night, I remember, some nights. And first thing in the morning, I used to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go and get it all done before school. I don't think everybody in Bellevue did this. Most of the families had a transfer firm come in evening, pick up the load of whatever it was they wanted to send to certain marketing places. If we had a stamp, and put your name on it, wrote out a bill of lading, and a transfer outfit would come and pick it up and deliver, and then the produce house would pay the farmers by mail. We had a truck, so I hauled it myself. It was, wouldn't have been much cheaper, but if you take a, sometimes you, there was not enough left after what they sold it for to pay just the express fee.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.