<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Well, when you're, you were finishing up high school, what were your thoughts in terms of your future? What would the next step be as you were graduating from high school?

MT: I wanted to go on to university, but by that time, Dad was dead. He died when he was fifty-six, so he was young. But we just didn't have any money to go to school. I tried to become a houseboy, and in fact, I think Reverend Murphy of the Baptist Church was able to find me a houseboy job to go to university. But times were so bad that if one of us left the farm it was just impossible to even continue because one person not participating, we just couldn't make a go of it. And so, I had to give it up. And so we, during high school, and after high school... well, actually, to go back a little bit further that that, we were farming before I graduated high school but I would quit school on May 1st and, to, to take over the farm. But before that, my brother Henry would have the ground prepared and plants put in and everything like that. And then he would go to White River Packing House where he worked there, where he would get enough money so that we could pay the... like Hogarty and all those schoolkids to help us pick beans and cut lettuce and things like that. So I quit school in May 1st, and then take my homework to school early in the morning, and then I come back and would work all day, 'til seven or eight o'clock at night, and then we'd go home and eat and I'd study and take my lessons for the next day. I did that for thirty days in May and then it continued into September where I couldn't... we had to have all the fall crops go out. But the main, but what I'm trying to get at is, if my brother... with me coming back on the farm and, which he'd prepared, and the money that he would make, we would pay for the plowing and just the general expenses of buying seed and fertilizer and things like that. So, it was just a real touch-and-go seikatsu at that time.

TI: Well, in addition to just running the farm and barely making it there, you also had the sawmill, the debts from that. Was that also part of what you had to do also during this time?

MT: That's what made us get into that situation, is when Dad, when the sawmill ended and immediately, the economy went down into extreme depression and we knew Dad had a debt, had the debt because he brought in money from Japan but he brought, his friends were all putting up the money to get the sawmill going. So when it stopped, well, he was in debt at that time, although he paid quite a bit of it during his operation from 1917 to 1918. But Mother brought that up, the situation up with my brother and I and said that -- in fact we, here again, we talked to Dwight Hartman, the attorney, and Mother, Mother... before we met Hartman, Mother said that Dad has a debt, and Japanese-style would mean my brother Henry and me pay off that debt. And her reason was, she said, either one of you, if you should become successful, that people say would say, "Yeah, you're successful, Min or Henry because you didn't pay your father's debt off." Dwight Hartman, the attorney said, "Well no, in this country your father's debt, when he died and your mother died, well then it pretty well goes with that. So you're not, you're not obligated to do that." But again, my mother put it that way, my brother and I said, "Fine, we'll, Japanese style, we'll pay it off."

And so we, from what he earned, what we earned on the farm, and what we -- and lot of times between the farm, like Smith Brothers had, they raised, oh, probably fifty acres of potatoes. And all the Japanese would go in November, December, in the snow, we'd pick up potatoes. And the digger would dig all the potatoes and we would, to pick up the potatoes, we'd carry forty, forty empty sacks on either side, and they're heavy, you know, and we'd pick up the potatoes and then when they're halfway full we'd set 'em on the side and we'd take another one. And we'd go down these long lines and, but it was cold, snow, rain, and, but all, some of that money we always put aside to pay Dad's debt off. And like I mentioned, we didn't pay a hundred percent off, on the dollar, but we had, I believe, about eighty, eighty-five percent we paid it off. And my brother continued that, even after he went to camp, went into Minidoka, and Minidoka, started to farm, working on the farm in Payette and Vale, Oregon, continued that. And then when I came back, I remember the last check my brother and mother gave me was to give to a lady named Mrs. Nakata, lived in the Yesler Housing and she was really surprised, and really, tears came down her eyes that we had done that. And she never expected it. But her husband had loaned it to Dad and he'd died many years before that. But for us to go back that far, she was really, really appreciative. And this is the Japanese kimochi and really, I think, grew into me experiencing all this experience. And I'm glad I was born Japanese American and I was raised Japanese American and to this day I'm very proud of the fact that I'm Japanese American. Those are the things that stayed with me, besides scouting, was very meaningful to me.

TI: How did your mother feel? Like when you paid that last debt off. Did you talk to her, that it was done? And what was her reaction?

MT: Oh, she was very pleased and she... they were over in Payette. By that time, after I came back, I helped my brother purchase a ranch over there in Payette, on the Snake River. But she stayed right with my brother's family there. But she was very pleased because when I came back from the army, I was coming to Seattle, she asked me to deliver that check to Mrs. Nakata. So, so, I guess it was a real load off her back. But she, her life was... from comfortable to the tough life she lived in this country where she would've probably been real happy if she'd stayed in Japan and...

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.