<Begin Segment 10>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

TI: But Sumie, how did your family eventually get the house back? You said there was a family?

SA: They moved, but we couldn't live in it (right away). But they had (finally) moved out by the time we returned.

TI: I see.

SA: But it was an unlivable house, and I don't know how they lived in it. These, they were called, really what you call "white trash." (They even chopped down fruit trees for firewood).

TI: So it took time to just clean it up and make it more livable.

SA: (...) They had to get a professional plowman who plowed the fields for us. And a lot of things were stolen. They just went every day (to the house) to clean up (...) the best they could. But I didn't see all that, because I was working in this American family's home (while) going to school.

TI: So give me a picture of the house. Like tell me what the house was like before the war, like how large was it, what were the rooms like?

SA: Oh, you know...

TI: You mentioned the bathhouse, describe that...

SA: By Japanese standards, when you think of (the) Japanese Americans, my grandfather (...) did well at the public market; he made a lot of money. (We had) the house was painted. We had even (cement) sidewalks, and things like that. (...)

TI: But before that, before the war, describe the house.

SA: Okay, I'm sorry. Okay.

TI: Like how many rooms, and did you have your own room?

SA: No, we had four bedrooms, but we had an outdoor toilet. But we had water pumped into the house from the well. We had a well. And then we had a bathhouse that my grandfather had built. (...) A lot of my friends would say, "That's luxurious." Because they used to take their baths in a washtub. But we had a bath house that my grandfather had built and we built a fire underneath (...). And then like a raft, and we would sink into it. But we would wash ourselves outside the tub and immerse ourself into the tub. And all my sisters would all get into it and we enjoyed that a lot. And I remember that my mother would put wood in the fire and it would get hotter and hotter and hotter. And you could withstand it, real hot water. And we would come out looking like lobsters. I'll tell you. [Laughs] And then my mother would, after we'd bathe, my mother would put the cover on top of the tub and she would recycle the water and use it for, next day. It would be still warm, and she would (use) the water (to) do the laundry. And it was actually clean because we would all wash ourselves outside the tub. And it was kind of a nice bathhouse. Yeah, we enjoyed that, (...).

TI: Was there a certain order in terms of who got to take the bath first?

SA: Oh, of course. My father.

TI: So tell me how that worked.

SA: The men of the house got to go in first.

SP: So your brothers, too.

SA: No, not so much my brothers. My father got to go in first. And we enjoyed it. And I think all the, we used to have some permanent workers, too. And sometimes they would be (...) Kibeis (working for us) and they really enjoyed it, I remember. (...)

TI: I'm sorry, I still want to go back. So when you guys had bath night, would the men relax, too, with perhaps storytelling or drinking, or is still pretty much bath, and to bed?

SA: It was just a bathhouse. Just went in there and took a bath and that was it.

SP: No social component.

SA: No socialization.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.