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TI: But let's go, I mean, so earlier you talked about how your dad worked at Furuya and then at some point, he made this change to being out towards Renton. So why don't you talk about where you grew up.

TO: Well, I think my father lost a job because of the Great Depression. It was very similar to times now. He was just laid off, and I think the Furuya company went broke, if I understand what happened those days. And so he had to do something, so I think we moved to... I don't recall those days, but out in Sunnydale. There was some farming out there and I don't know if working for another farmer or what, but he was a farm laborer in the farming one way or the other. And then from there he started his own farm in, I guess it's near SeaTac airport. It's on Highway 99. The only landmark you can see, and I don't think it's even there, there's a very famous restaurant there, and we farmed behind the restaurant. I forgot even the name of the restaurant, I'm sorry to say. But it's near Angle Lake, anyway. And by then, my oldest brother came from Japan, and he was with us and they were farming there. And, of course, he went broke, he just couldn't make it. And so we ended up working for, my father working for, in Lacey, Lacey, Washington, we moved down there. And he was working for an Obata family. Mr. Obata, that was an Alaska labor contractor, Alaska cannery labor contractor. And I think he raised a lot of stuff that they could salt and stuff, and feed his crews in Alaska. I remember that a little earlier in the year, there's nothing but woods around there, so they'd be out there picking ferns, warabi, to salt, I guess, or whatever they did, dry it or something, and took to Alaska. One of the distinct things I remember is they butchered a hog. I was never around anything like that up to then, they hung this hog up by the hind legs and then they had a washtub under it, and then they slit its throat. And, of course, I guess to catch the blood, and that hog just squealed and squealed. I still have occasional nightmares over that, because it squealed for the longest, longest time. [Laughs] And that made a big impression on me. I distinctly remember that.

We went to school in Lacey, for a very, very short time, in grade school. I think there's a picture but I don't even know what happened to the picture, this class picture that they took. But I think, when my mother died, I think it got lost someplace.

TI: When you think back to that picture, were there other Japanese students with you?

TO: No, just the Obata family, they were the only... and I think there was one, one of them was Hank, Henry Obata, and I think he's lived there in Seattle and I think he had some, has a son that's very prominent here in the news business or something. But anyway, that was the family. And I didn't know them, very little, because we were there for such a short time. And then my father, shortly after that, after we were there for, I don't know how long we were there, maybe a year or thereabouts, we moved to this place in Renton. And that was his, I guess, a good buddy from Japan, Oyamas, had a farm there. Mr. Oyama, and he went to work for him, farm labor. And right next to the Oyama farm was, a Masuda family had a chunk of ground there, I think about ten acres of land. And this is a well-known, Min Masuda, that's family. But it was just raw, raw land. I think my father must have made an agreement with the Masuda family that he could farm the land if he cleared the property for I don't know how many years. There must have been some kind of agreement. And so he was working for the Oyamas and he was part-time over there clearing, clearing the land. Of course, he really did manual labor. He burned the stumps because it was logged off. And it was very fertile ground now because of the big cedar trunks and stuff, and he'd burn it. He didn't use any dynamite, he had no horse or anything, he did it all by hand, if I look back. All I can remember is those fires to burn those stumps. We'd stick some potatoes in 'em and bake our potatoes in those.

TI: In the burning stump you would use that to cook potatoes?

TO: Well, we would, as kids. Not him. He really did it the hard way.

TI: And so I'm trying to imagine how they would do that, do they kind of dig under the stump and start a fire and just try to burn it?

TO: Yeah. That's all shovel and pick, no tractors or horses or anything, and so he did it the hard way.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.