Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Gordon Hirabayashi Interview I
Narrator: Gordon Hirabayashi
Interviewers: Becky Fukuda (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: April 26, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-hgordon-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

BF: What about your father?

GH: Oh, Father was one of those, he influenced us more in terms of religion. At one stage, when I began to get argumentative, I accused him once. I said, "You, you are opposed to our gambling. You don't even have playing cards in the house. 'Course you, you would, you recorded with disdain about this guy who gambled, and so on. I, I respect that, but what about you? You're involved in farming. Look, you involve all of us to get, work in the farm, all, say six months from winter -- seeding things and fertilizing the fields and all sorts of things for crop time when we get our money. And sometimes the bugs would come right at the time when we're harvesting and it destroys the value of our income, or the price goes down, or it rains and it opens up and gets slimy. That's the biggest gamble there is. And you're gambling our lives. How can you justify that?"

BF: What did he say?

GH: He listens to that and he laughs, "That's good," he says, and he walks away. That didn't discourage him one bit. He loved it. He loved the work. It was honest work, honest day's work, you know. He says, "I can't control weather, that's God's domain." And as far as he was concerned, so was the price and so on. And so, he never worried about it. But he, and he never really, he wasn't like, "If you following these golden rules," with a whip or anything. He just was his own, I mean I could see it -- Uchimura Kanzo, his principles, I could see it emanating out of his life. For twenty years I'm watching this. I'm going to school for twenty years learning what Uchimura Kanzo's principles are. Not his rationalizations, what his principles, what it means 'cause he's living it. Not like some people who would take advantage of it where it's handy, and avoid it when it's unpleasant. He lives it all the way through. And he could laugh. He could laugh at the worst catastrophes. I mean, it's something that he has to cope with.

BF: So he, you were mentioning that he was very honest in his work, in his business dealings. And that's one way you saw that. And you mentioned just now, that he, he was very, sounds like he was very positive in the face of...

GH: Yeah, yeah.

BF: Could you go more into that? Or, could you give me more examples of what you saw?

GH: Well, buyers for packing houses -- there were competing packing houses, especially when vegetables were short -- they'd be making bids for this patch here. Buying it. They have a way of estimating what could come out, how many crates. And so they buy it. "We'll give you, you save, you give us that's -- we'll promise you this." And, they would, there was a reputation that stuck with Dad particularly, but with this group, this co-op group in general, but particularly with Dad. If he says he'll do something, he'll do it. He was respected for that. Mom would laugh sometimes, says, "Only a fool and you would do it." [Laughs] But she also respected him for his strength on that sort of thing. And when we're packing crates of cauliflower -- you know, you put in about a dozen cauliflower and you mix it so that you don't put the best six in, but you mix it so it comes out even. Every crate is first class but it could be better if you just picked the best. Well, he didn't do that. But he, he tended to, like packing crates of lettuce, the top dozen is distinctly better in other farms. In ours it was more generally the same. It means this top is a sample of...

BF: What's really in there.

GH: Yeah, he tried to follow that principle. And so his was more standard straight through. And, he had that reputation by the buyers. And so...

BF: They knew what they were getting.

GH: I can, I can see that he's respected for his position and his standards. So, I had a respect for that, but I never liked it. I never liked farming. And, so, and then when he'd go to... annually he'd pay his debts at the end of the crop. And then September it's ready to start our borrowing again. In other words, the payment, they have to carry us until the next crop. And the crop would start in in June, but, June, July and August they'd be getting paid and it's all paid up only to start again. [Laughs]

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.