<Begin Segment 5>

DN: When... your father worked at the Port Blakely mill, and that was where a lot of the early Japanese that came to the Island worked. Can you describe their little community there?

EH: See, that was gone by the time that I remember, but just listening to the stories, they were on, from the end of Blakely bay, go up to Fort Ward, which was, later became the U.S. naval radio station, and on the right-hand side of the road, there was, there was a crick that went up there, and that's where they all got their water. And that was... I can't think of the name of the village that they called it. But that's where they had their homes, and they were more or less the laborers, according to Jerry, in the Port Blakely mill. And loading, loading the ships, the sailing ships at that time. I have a picture of Port Blakely downstairs on the wall there. You can see some of the old sailing ships that were in there. And after the mill closed down, a lot of them, I think, moved away. Probably moved to Seattle or wherever they went, but there were a lot of 'em, that they found that they could, they couldn't own property because they were aliens. And only, the only ones that could own the property were the ones that were born in the United States. And they would rent property and then start strawberry. And they raised the most finest strawberries in the world. And that was the Marshall strawberries. And you won't, I don't know whether you can find Marshall strawberries to this day, because they only lasted a short time, but the flavor, oh boy, it was really somethin'.

DN: How many of these strawberry farms were there? Do you have any recollection?

EH: On the Island?

DN: Yeah.

EH: Boy.

DN: One figure I read said thirty-eight, something like that.

EH: Well, there were two hundred and seventy-three of 'em, I think that was the count, that were evacuated from the Island. And the Kitayamas, they, they had greenhouses, the Furutas had greenhouses, Jerry Nakata's dad had strawberries, the Okazakis had strawberries, the Kouras had strawberries. I named the Sakumas... Suyematsus, and I think the Hayashidas had strawberries. I think the Hayashidas was the family out in the north end. When they, they left, they leased property or rented property from Maude Beaton, who was a old-timer in Port, Port Madison. And then she let them store all their goods in the house and locked it all up, and it was there when they came home.

DN: But you, you did know someone whose father had worked at the Port Blakely mill, didn't you?

EH: Yeah, Jerry.

DN: Oh, Jerry?

EH: Jerry's dad did, yeah. He, that's why I wish Jerry could have come up here today, but he, he lost his wife I think about a year and a half ago, and he still works for the Nakata, they own Town and Country Markets. They, I don't think... but he works over in the Central Market over here. And today's a bad day because that's freight day. And when we have, well, there's four or six of us get together periodically from our class, and we have a class meeting. And Jerry is in and out because of, he's got to take care of the freight. But...

DN: But, but you say most of the, most of the farmers actually came from elsewhere? They weren't left-, holdovers from the mill?

EH: Yeah.

DN: So how big a, how big of, how big were these farms?

EH: Well, the Sakumas had... boy, now I'm guessing. I would say ten to twenty acres. And then they went, moved back to Winslow, and then the Okazakis came in. And I would say that they had about twenty acres of berries.

DN: Did they grow crops besides the berries?

EH: They would, okay, periodically you have to take and change the ground, so-to-speak. You pull your strawberries out, they would grow peas, and several summers there, they'd hired us kids to pick peas. And I guess they shipped them to Seattle, because there was, the strawberry cannery didn't handle peas.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.