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MA: And your father's home, can you describe that a little bit? The area where you grew up, your home, what that was like?

CQ: You know, I don't remember very much of anything early, of course. I only remember my Auntie Kakeuchi and Uncle Kakeuchi's home, and then my oldest sister and her husband's house. And then when I came home to live with my dad and my brothers and my two sisters, it was to Jersey Island. And Jersey Island is a small island in the Sacramento Delta, you know, the river. And it's, and our address was Via Knightsen, which was a town on the mainland. And so that was a very strange place because my dad and my oldest brother at that time were always going out to work and being with the workers. I don't know where, but it must have been around the area, but it wasn't on the island. Our island was very small. And he and my brother would come home every two weeks, and they'd bring us staples like rice and canned, you know, a box of canned milk, and sugar and flour and beans, you know, things that were real staples. And then we had chickens, and we had vegetables, a vegetable garden.

And so we had two houses, and one, they were both, they were both narrow and very tall houses, but it was only one floor. And so I don't know, really, what it was. We had an outhouse, and a Japanese bath, that was in 1939, 'cause I was six. Let's see, 1937, I guess. And my sister, my two sisters and I lived in one of the houses, and we had the living room and the kitchen and our bedroom. And then the other house was the same, it was next door. And it had three rooms, and my two brothers and my dad lived in that house. And that's what I remember the most. And the windows were very high. And so when I think about it now, I don't know, I don't know. I guess they were used for workers' housing, perhaps, but they were just two of them there. And we had pigs and chickens and a vegetable garden.

And I was never allowed to climb up on the levee, because the winds were really strong, and they felt that I would be blown into the river. And so the one thing I couldn't do is every climb up on the levee to go to the river by myself. And that was, you know, that's all I remember. But I remember my brothers were very active, and they did all kinds of things, and my brother made little stilts for us to walk around in, and he made all kinds of slingshots. My sister and I were never as good as he was, he would shoot birds, and my sister would skin them, my older sister would skin them, and then she would, you know, make, like, teriyaki, cut off the heads and feet, and she'd charcoal cook them, cook them over charcoal. And they were just fantastic, I mean, they were crunchy and wonderful.

MA: Was Jersey Island, I'm curious about that place. Was that, were there many Japanese families living there?

CQ: No, we were the only Japanese family on the island. And most of them were Portuguese, and that's really funny because my husband's last name is Portuguese even though his dad was from Mexico City.

MA: That is interesting. Do you know what brought them there or what the circumstances were?

CQ: They were all farmers, they were all farmers. The whole island was farming. And they farmed, basically, asparagus, and I don't remember what. But I remember asparagus because we always got a lot of asparagus. And they had a one-room schoolhouse, and they had a PO box. And then on the far side of the island, the ocean was there. And so it was a port, it was a little port. And I remember the school and sort of the store and everything was at that part of the island. And we were on the other part of the island where you came into the island from the mainland. And so, and take the bridge to come in to the island, and then my teacher, she was the only teacher from first grade through eighth grade, was Mrs. Skendall. And she would drive over the bridge, and we would all be waiting for her at the end of our lane. And we would ride across the island, straight through, straight through the middle of the island to get to the school. And then she would teach school. And she was very, very formal, so we never got to know her. And we were all terrified of her. But she always picked us up every morning.

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