<Begin Segment 8>

AI: Right, we're continuing our interview here with Elaine Ishikawa Hayes, and we had started talking a little bit about Sacramento and that you had moved there on your seventh birthday, and then was it about a year later that your sister Anna was born in --

EH: Yes.

AI: -- in 1931?

EH: Anna was the fourth daughter.

AI: And maybe if you could tell a little bit about the house that you first lived in there in Sacramento and that little area.

AI: Uh-huh, uh-huh. It was on the corner of Fifth and T. And I think the owner probably was a Caucasian person. I just vaguely remember. But Fifth and T was quite a... Sacramento streets are named alphabetically with the alphabet and then numbers. And the East/West streets were letters and the North/South streets were numbers. So Fifth and T became a very common place. And Sacramento is not so long that for the Japanese population, Nihonmachi was roughly, oh, through I and maybe Sixth Avenue to Second Avenue. That was Nihonmachi. And, and then there was a park called Southside Park just a block away on Sixth and T. A sizable park where the Fourth of July fireworks were always held. And so people were very familiar with that area. And in hot Sacramento, I mean, you walked for shade anywhere.

Both Sara and Anna, who were born in Sacramento, and Sara is three years younger than Anna, were both delivered by a Japanese midwife who lived on Sixth and T, a block away. And, and I must say I think Japanese midwives were very busy through this whole history. But Mrs. Oshita had a two-story white stucco house, and I think the main story she kept like a miniature hospital, and rural women particularly would probably stay there for as long and in, in our days, when I was in elementary school, there was a firm belief that you needed to be bedridden for thirty days. And it's, it's amazing that we all got along, because I remember teachers asking me all the time, "Is your mother up yet?" And I'd say, "No." And it was kind of amazing. And every day she was asking me. And, and finally she would be up and around. That happened twice.

But Lincoln School was on... Lincoln School was a block square, I guess. And that was on P and Fifth between Fifth and Fourth on... between P and (Q). So we just walked from T -- Q, R, S, T -- four blocks straight up the hill. And there was a railroad track between... on our street, so... but it was quite pleasant and Nihonmachi was on the other side from about P to I and running Fourth to Second or thereabouts. So I would dash home, get a snack, and, and then have to go back to (O) and (Third Street). Fourth, maybe Third (Street) was the... Sacramento had two Japanese schools. One was called Showa Gakko, the Protestant kids went to. And then Bukkyokai had a, a bigger Japanese school that the Buddhist kids went to. Then Nichiren church also had a small Japanese school. And that certainly became our enclave of our social life, or center of the community kind of issue.

There, there was a Buddhist church. The Buddhist church was still the bigger congregation, and... but there was a Methodist church, a Baptist church, and a Presbyterian church. I think the Salvation Army had some kind of small congregation, and there were oth-, a couple of other small... I can't remember the denominational names. But we certainly became, the churches became kind of an extended family or enclave of closer friends.

AI: And --

EH: And we knew the parents, then, because we would see them all the time. And every, every Christmas, every Easter, every graduation, every Thanksgiving, those were all regularly held dinners, potlucks usually. Probably all the fujinkai ladies probably made the sushi and, and...

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.