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TI: Describe the house that your family lived in in Selleck. What was that like?

TT: Oh, all the families up in Selleck, they lived in individual houses. Not real fancy house, but all wooden houses because of the sawmill. We had two bedroom, living room, kitchen, and a laundry room in the back.

TI: So it sounded like a pretty nice home. I mean, two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, laundry room. And they were all kind of like...

TT: Wood burner.

TI: Wood burning stove?

TT: Living room and a kitchen, because, you know, sawmill, we had plenty of wood to burn.

TI: And so you're saying, and all the families had pretty much the same kind of housing?

TT: Yeah.

TI: How about the bachelor men? Did they have houses or did...

TT: Oh, they had what they called bunkhouses. They had two big ones, and they had a central kitchen for bachelors. And they had a big Japanese bath.

TI: And describe the Japanese bath. What was that like?

TT: Well, they had a separate bathhouse, and big tub. [Laughs] It was for all the bachelors.

TI: And how many people or men could be in that tub at the same time?

TT: In the...

TI: In the bathtub, how many would be in there at the same time?

TT: Oh, you could put a dozen in there. They had a separate boiler for boiling water.

TI: And so growing up as a boy, were you able to go into the bathhouse also?

TT: We had a, we took a bath at home.

TI: So this was just really for more of the bachelor men, and they would do that?

TT: Yeah.

TI: Interesting. Tell me a little bit more now about Selleck in terms of how many other Japanese families or Japanese were in Selleck before the war?

TT: Well, at one time, I think there must have been twelve, fifteen different families. Must have been 150, 200 people, maybe not quite 200 Japanese up there, kids and all, some families had a lot of kids.

TI: So it's almost like about half were families and then half were bachelors? Or how would you think about the ratio of families to bachelors?

TT: Oh, we had a lot more bachelors, single men. They all worked in the sawmill.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.