<Begin Segment 7>

AI: Well, speaking of the farming, I wanted to ask you each to tell me a little bit about what your farms, your family farms looked like. What kind of crops you grew, what was the daily life like on a farm, growing up on a farm?

TI: Let me mention, going back to my good family friend, the Clark Jenkins. They looked after our farm while we were gone, and also they stored our valuables, pictures and family things that we could not take to camp. And neither did we want to sell it. These were items that are cherished by most families, early childhood and family pictures. Unfortunately their house burned down. Mr. Hirotaka's family also had their family goods stored with the same family, and so they lost all of those items also.

Now, getting on the farms here, I think our family farm, usually about ten acres. And my dad liked to -- I wouldn't say liked to -- but they moved around quite a bit in Bellevue. One of the reasons was that the leases were usually around five years or so, a tradeoff for clearing the land and having free use of the land for those years. Then the, as the soil was depleted of the nutrients -- for instance, strawberries -- why, they would move on to another place and go over the same process again. But the main crop was strawberries in the Bellevue area in those days. But later on, after the Bellevue, especially after, the Bellevue Vegetable Growers Association was established, they were able to ship vegetables to the East Coast by rail car. And some of the items that they handled were tomatoes, and peas was the big thing, and cauliflower, and I don't know about lettuce, did they ship lettuce out of there?

JM: Some.

TI: Some? Oh.

JM: Yeah, but not very much. I know they shipped celery.

TI: Oh, celery.

JM: Yeah. And peas. Yeah, tomatoes.

TI: Okay.

JM: And I might add too, that that warehouse provided a lot of employment for people in Bellevue.

TI: That's right. Summer help for the school kids.

JM: So, that was one of the main, what you'd call industries, to put Bellevue on the map. Because we had our trademark on these items and they were shipped back east.

TI: Was it called, one of 'em was "Bellevue Brand," or...?

JM: Yeah. They spelled that a little different, though. B-E-L-L-E...

TI: Oh, oh that's right. They spelled differently than the name, "Bellevue."

JM: But they had a reputation of having good produce.

TI: But they also raised many other vegetables, other than the shipping. They had for instance, strawberries that you couldn't, we didn't ship. And they, we raised beans and cabbage and...

JM: Well, there was a lot of other item, or produce that were raised for the local market, and everybody had a little bit of everything. Because, you couldn't depend on one thing to get a little revenue to live on.

AI: What would be some of your earliest crops of the season, that would come out first?

TI: Lettuce was probably one of the earlier crops. Lettuce.

JM: Strawberries.

TI: Strawberries was in June, yeah.

JM: The early lettuce was 'bout the same time, I guess.

TI: Yeah, and cauliflower came out pretty early, too.

JM: But myself, I wasn't much of a farmer because, (...) the way we started out, like I said, my dad was in poor health. And so we struggled along all right. We made it. My dad, everybody knew about his education, so every time something come up, why, he would have to go out. And he wasn't physically able to do it, but he went out anyway. And they'd have all kinds of meetings, Japanese Association, and every other minor things that would come up -- say even within the family -- they would come to him. And he'd have to go out. 'Course he didn't work so much out in the field, it was my mother and all of us kids who tried to keep it going. So I can't say that I was one of the best farmers around there. But I think Mr. Ito and Hirotaka here, when Mr. Matsuoka came to help and living with them, why, they were quite successful.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.