<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, and then, I'm not sure if it was around this time that, was there some trouble, I think you had mentioned that one of your neighbors, was it Mr. Nakatsu and someone else who was actually attacked and harassed by some people in the neighborhood?

PB: Well, even when we were in Des Moines, these young men would come and steal strawberries at dusk. Well, they didn't really want the strawberries, I think they just wanted to harass us.

AI: These weren't the workers, though, were they?

PB: No, these were the teenage boys. I knew the names of all of 'em and everything. We knew the boys, but they would come in just about when it was getting dark, and they would get up in the berry fields, they'd make a lot of noise, and let on like they're stealing the strawberries. Well, they, they had no need for strawberries, but they were just harassing us. And they continued to do that, and there was a Nakatsu family, a Watanabe family, and our family, that were more or less known Japanese. There were other Japanese later on; the Andos and some other families. But they went into Nakatsus place, too, and of course, Mr. Nakatsu was known as a fighter. He was the president of Toyo Club in Seattle. They called him the "Bulldog," because we heard that he got in a fight and he'd chewed the ear off of the fellow -- [laughs] -- so they called him the "Bulldog." But anyhow, he was known as a fighter; the Caucasians knew that, so they went to their, Nakatsus' farm, and 'course, they were in the berry patches like they did at our place. So Nakatsu, being a fighter man, why he was gonna show them, he was gonna beat 'em up. So they got in an awful fight, but see, these teenage boys, they were smart enough that they kept egging him on until they got him off of the property and out into the county road. So then whatever they did out there, they wouldn't be trespassing in Nakatsus' property. And they really beat him up and his helper, who was a young man that we knew quite well. In fact, he died shortly after that. But they were severely beaten. But I don't think the police did much about it in those days, and people didn't report things, you know.

AI: So it sounds like that was quite a serious incident.

PB: Yes.

AI: But, but it was probably not officially recorded.

PB: No, nobody made a big issue of anything like that, and we never made issue of it. We got, we had the same trouble after we moved up on the hill, too. People would come in from the back, and get in the berry patch, and they were really stealing berries. These were some of the neighbors that lived... 'course, we didn't know all those neighbors, because 16-acre farm, why, at the far end of the farm, even if we knew, what could we do? They just run off, if we tried to chase 'em, we couldn't harm them in any way, because they were just stealing berries.

AI: And I'm wondering, well, as to why, why, especially the Japanese families didn't report any of this. Did you, did it even occur to you to report any of this activity, or to ask for police assistance?

PB: No, I don't think we even thought about it, because we felt we were the minority, and we wouldn't have a chance. We never thought of it in that way, of thinking, well, we should get help or something. Of course, like in school, if we got, the children were mean to us, we'd tell the, our teacher about it, or the principal, and he would reprimand them, but they kept it up. They didn't stop because they got reprimanded. It was just one of those things that the kids did in those days.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.