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TI: So we talked about your mom a little bit, and she had four children, you were the fourth. Tell me about your father.

PN: My father was probably more suited to be a doctor or a teacher than a farmer. He was a night owl, he loved to read, he loved education. I went to Boring Elementary School, and he was on the school board for, like, twenty-something years. He was president of the Gresham-Troutdale JACL a couple times, very civic-minded, but pretty outspoken. So he would speak his mind, and I remember somebody from the school board, when my father passed away and there was a memorial service for him, somebody from the school board said, "Shig would speak his mind regardless of what anybody thought or said," etcetera. So I think I got that from him. But then my mother would say, "Oh, why'd you have to say that?" "Why'd you say that?" So there was a little bit of that back and forth with them. He was a pretty outspoken guy.

TI: And was he... or describe the Japanese American community in Boring.

PN: Well, in that area, a lot of farmers, they had put in their first crop of strawberries, and then had to leave because of the exclusion orders. So mostly farmers, but we were pretty much kind of tucked away. There were a lot of, there were more farmers in Sandy, there were more farmers in Gresham, but where we lived, we were probably the only family, mostly white families around us. But they were tight-knit. So you'd go to their homes, other Japanese American families, different dinners, they had a bowling league, so they always bowled together. It's a very close community, so if something happens, they've got this phone tree, they're really mobilized, pretty amazing sense of community.

TI: Now, would that be, probably, or through the JACL, or would that be just... how was that organized?

PN: Yeah, I think through the JACL. There was a hall there near Gresham where -- I don't know if it was the JACL then, probably, or the Japanese Association, some kind of Japanese Association where there'd always be Christmas parties. It's called GT Hall, for Gresham-Troutdale Hall. So you get together with different families. But they weren't part of our day-to-day life in that sense. You know, I was one of, I think the only, sort of, student of color in my classes through grade school and even through high school. So you'd get together maybe on weekends or kind of family dinners.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.