<Begin Segment 30>

AI: Well, I wanted to ask you about how some of the neighbors in Detroit reacted to you and your family because I'm thinking that many of them probably had never met a Japanese American before.

MF: I guess not. Well, we didn't associate with people. There was Polish people on one side of the street and the other side it was all Negroes. And sometime we would go on the other side of the street because they would sell chickens and meat and things like that. On Polish side it was mostly grocery store.

AI: Did anyone ever ask you were you Chinese or Japanese or did they, anyone ever ask you, "What are you?" or, "Where did you come from?"

MF: No. I remember writing to my mother in camp telling her that lettuce was, was thirty-five cents a head or something like that. And at home I think it was about fifteen cents, in Seattle when we left for camp. And oh, I was telling her about the chicken that, that you don't buy dead chickens. You buy the live chicken and there they feather it, cut the feathers and the neck and everything for you. And David was scared and he said, "I don't want to go in that store." He said, "Oh, they kill the live thing." [Laughs] But sometimes you like to have fried chicken or roast chicken.

AI: And so you could get a really fresh one.

MF: Oh yes. And you have to line up because there was one little store and there was only two people working there and people just lined up, half a block long.

AI: Oh my.

MF: And it was just only across the street, too. So we had chicken quite a bit. And then you know, we had lotta visitors during their stay in Detroit because there was a, lot of my brother's friends were in the army. And I guess they must've been stationed near there and they would stop in. They knew that -- my brother told them that we were in Detroit and gave them the address and everything and all of a sudden we would have company, Japanese company.

AI: So, what, what kinds of food would you cook for them when they stopped by?

MF: Oh, I always cooked rice for them and my husband loves tsukemono so we always had tsukemono and the boy said, "I don't want anything else but just tsukemono and rice," he says. They're just sick of American food, I'm sure. They missed the rice.

AI: What vegetables did you use for tsukemono?

MF: Oh, we had cabbage and I made celery tsukemono. But they didn't have nappa.

AI: Well, for people who don't know, could you explain how you made it?

MF: Huh?

AI: For people who don't know about tsukemono, can you explain how you made it, what you did to make it.

MF: Oh, well you know, celery, I kinda took the skin, strings off and then I just cut, cut the, well, celery's about that high, I cut in half and then I salt it slightly and then put a little weight on it. I put a dish and I put the weight on that.

AI: And about how long would you leave it?

MF: Well, about three days it would ripen. And if you think that celery is quite dry you put just at tiny bit, about couple of tablespoon of water. They didn't have nappa there at that time. I missed the nappa but we have a friend who's a Fukuoka-ken people and it's my mother's friends and they lived about fifteen miles from Detroit. And they owned a little farm there and they would bring me nappa and my husband was so happy. So he says, "Mother, you make the nappa tsukemono," and so I used to do that. They used to come down to Detroit for, I don't know, for clothes shopping or shoes or underwears and trousers and things like that. 'Cause where they lived I think it was just a little town where didn't have a real nice department stores. And they would stop in and so we had dinner together and they would drive back. We lost contact with them after we left. I don't know where they are or -- they were my folks' friends there.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.