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MA: So you said you were born in 1923?

GY: Uh-huh.

MA: And where exactly were you born?

GY: [Laughs] I think, I'm pretty sure it was with a midwife, Japanese midwife. This is the kind of things that I wish my mother told me, I never wrote it down, and I've forgotten her name. But I was born where Washington State college now sits, on the Spokane River bank, across from Gonzaga University. And it used to be an old sawmill, McGoldrick Lumber Company, that used to cut logs that floated down the Spokane River. And in those days, used to be just blocks on end of floating logs that went into the sawmill. We had one in downtown Spokane and one by Gonzaga. And that house, I remember, had gas jets coming out of the wall, I assume for light, but we never used it. I think it was just too dangerous. But we lived there for a short while before we moved into town. My dad was working on the railroad at that time, so it was easy for him to cross where you people are staying, on Division Street. Across Division Street, walk down that hill, used to be a roadway where the hotel sits now, and walk to the clock tower, past the clock tower where the U.S. mail gathering station was.

MA: What do you remember about living, about those days living at the, you said the old sawmill camp? Were you old enough to remember some things about that?

GY: Oh yeah, you could hear the bandsaws going, high pitch, and when you hear big logs being cut, you could hear the whine of the blades. It's what they call a bandsaw, it's one continuous saw, like a band. And that would be going full-blast, and you could hear the wood being cut as the motor slowed down to get it into the wood. And then at noon, the steam whistle that was created by their engines, I guess, would blow at noon. And we had two of those... particularly at noon, everybody would look at their watch because McGoldrick Lumber Company sounded at noon, and the one downtown also sounded at noon.

MA: Do you recall, were there other Japanese families living in that area where you were born?

GY: Oh, yes. There was a couple of 'em, I'm not sure. I think Kawai was another one, but I think there were just two or three families that I know of.

MA: What exactly was your father's job during that time?

GY: He's just a laborer. Eventually it came to be a bid job of what they call mail handler. He read the, not so much the pouches but mail bags, and they had printed or written where they were supposed to go. If it was in Wisconsin or Texas or in the northwest, he had to know the various stations and what railroads were in that general area. Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, B&O, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, SP&S, Spokane, Portland and Seattle, Union Pacific, Milwaukee, Great Northern.

MA: So he started then as kind of a laborer and then moved up to be more of an administrative...

GY: Yes, yes.

MA: So how long, approximately, did you live in that area?

GY: Probably, oh, I don't know, not even a year, I'll bet. My sister, I'm not sure where she was born, whether it was in that area or not, but she died after nine months with encephalitis, "sleeping sickness." Anyway, I presume it was in, in that area where she was born.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.