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AI: Well, I want to ask you more about your year in L.A., but before we go there, I wanted to ask a little bit more about Japanese American community life around Loomis and Penryn, because it sounds like the store must have been kind of a, one of the centers of activity, because, of course, all the Japanese families would come to get their shoyu, and I think you mentioned in a earlier conversation that your father would sometimes peddle fish.

HK: Yeah.

AI: And so he, he must have been well-known to the community.

HK: Yes. You know, Loomis was actually a very Christian town, Methodists, and all my classmates were members of the Methodist family, so there, they would go to the Methodist church, which was in Loomis. Now, the rest, other families who were not Methodists were staunch Buddhists, who had the temple in Penryn, which was about three miles away. So that there was this separation, and my father, who was, came from a Buddhist background, would not let us go to the church, even for Christmas. Christmas, they had programs and parties and stuff, and we wouldn't, we wouldn't go. I don't remember that I ever went. Maybe once I might have stuck my head in and watched the show or something. But here we were, in Loomis, a Methodist town, and we were Buddhists, so that we didn't go to their... actually, we didn't associate, other than school, with the family or the, the kids. But, as a business, my father's best customers were the Methodists. [Laughs] So that when he went there, they were, they always welcomed him, and he was the fish man. Sakamaya-san. And that was kind of interesting. But talking of being the center, the store had a kind, the earliest owner of the store was a man from Kumamoto, so that the tradition was that the New Year party for the Kumamoto people would be held at that store. And so even after the next owner, who was Wakayama-ken, and then my father, who was from Wakayama, they, they were members of the Kumamoto group. And then on New Year's, all the Kumamoto men, no women, came to the store, and then they brought their chicken, and they made their umani. Do you know umani? It's a kind of vegetable stew with chicken. Very good with sake. And so they would have their party, that they would just cook their umani. Very simple, I make it myself, but they would cook it there in the store. And then they would have their sake and have their New Year party, and very much going on, and my father was part of that, because he was a member.

And so I'm very, I know Kumamoto dialect, and as I say in my, in my birth certificate story, I discovered, during, just before the war, when we had to carry around our birth certificate for identification, I found that our last name was pronounced, written "Kashiwaki." And that's different from Kashiwagi. And then I later realized that the, the midwife must have been from Kumamoto, and she made the report, and she says Kashiwaki, because all the Kumamotos, I remembered, pronounced (our) name Kashiwaki. [Laughs] Kashiwaki-san, Kashiwaki-san.

AI: That is so interesting.

HK: Yeah, that was an interesting, so I used it in the story. Yes. But, and then we had our picnics, and for that, my father was a supplier of kamaboko and chikuwa and ebi and things that they cooked for, fixed for that picnic, as well as for New Year. He would take orders from everyone, and then we would wrap the orders and have them ready, and all these people would come, and, his customers on the route, and there were many of 'em, Methodists.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.