Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Bob Y. Sakata Interview
Narrator: Bob Y. Sakata
Interviewer: Daryl Maeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-sbob-01-0008

<Begin Segment 8>

DM: So what did your, what did you do with all of your things?

BS: That's one place that you really have to give the Niseis and Isseis credit, where oh, I forgot the Japanese word they used, but one is, that they would all say is, "Shikata ga nai." We knew that when, when the press has advertised the fact that we had to leave our home within a given time, why, nobody in their right mind is going to offer you anything for what you gotta leave. So we didn't, we just left everything. Now, I know that we had some horses, and we certainly didn't want to let them starve to death, so I think my father gave the horses to our neighbors to take care of, and just told them to have 'em.

DM: So all the farm equipment that you had...

BS: Yeah, we just left it there.

DM: And cars.

BS: Yeah. I believe my brother somehow got something for our car, because we finally got ahead to the point where I remember us owning a brand new 1941 four-door Ford, brand new. And so I think he got something for it. But aside from that, we just left everything.

DM: Now, at this time, your family was still sharecropping?

BS: Yes. No, they were not sharecropping, they were what you call cash-rent farmers, where Dad would rent the farm directly from Emmanuel George.

DM: But, they didn't own the farm anyway.

BS: No.

DM: And so your, your possessions, you just left them at the house and --

BS: Left, left it all there.

DM: And what did you do with, with all the crops? Was your family...

BS: Just left it.

DM: But you were farming all the way up until the time you had to leave?

BS: Oh, yes. We, we tried to harvest everything we possibly could, because that's about the only cash we could have. And all the rest of the growing things, we just left it.

DM: So somebody else came in after you left?

BS: I'm sure, I'm sure. I didn't keep track of that. And frankly speaking, I didn't care to know.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.