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MA: So going back to your farm a little bit, how big was your farm, can you describe maybe your, the area around your house and your neighbors?

KB: Yeah, I could say something about the South Park community.

MA: Sure.

KB: It was, okay, the area that we were living in was east of the Duwamish River, and it went to, at that time, it was East Marginal Way. Now, this is all Boeing, as far as I can tell now, but there were one, two, three... six Japanese farms in this area. And then Fourteenth Avenue was one border of the farm area, and then on the other side of Fourteenth Avenue, we had another group of Japanese living more in regular houses. I'm not exactly sure what they were doing, but I think they were probably in service professions or working on somebody else's farm or whatever. And then we had a Japanese language school there, and it was like the community center. There was a school building, and then there was a big, like an auditorium/gym combination type place where we had programs. We used to have stage performances, movies, New Year's celebration would be there, they bring all the good food, everybody would have, like, a picnic basket and we'd all share. And there were Japanese dances, there was judo, there was kendo, so all those activities took place in that community center. And that was away from the farm, it was on the other side of Fourteenth Avenue. Then there was a grocery store that was run by a Japanese couple. This was a little bit after we more or less grew up, but they were at the end of that bridge, and it was Frank's Store, and it used to be this nice place for us to gather when we needed to have something.

MA: So it seems like there was a really vibrant community, Japanese community in South Park.

KB: There was. There was a South Park Community Club, my father was very active in that group and...

MA: What did the Community Club do?

KB: Well, I used to ask them, "What do you do?" and the only thing I can remember was, like, if somebody got sick, they would go visit. If they want to plan a picnic or something like that, maybe they would be in charge of it. I'm not exactly sure how active they were, but I found some old letters, and there are lots of letters addressed to the South Park Community Club, but it's all in Japanese so I don't know what they were communicating. Also, they worked probably in conjunction with the Seattle group. Like I remember if some dignitary from Japan came, then they would go to meet that person if they had any kind of a reception or something like that, then the Community Club officers would be involved with that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.