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TI: Okay, so we talked about your father, but let's go back to when he was about twenty-four, twenty-five years old, when he was going to go on his adventure. Where did he go in the United States when he came?

ST: Well, I'm not too sure about his very early years. I know he must have landed in Seattle, because I think that was the port he entered. And he spent some time in Oregon. There's, my sister said she thought he spent time in Oregon. And then there was the, he has some documentation of the hospital association that he joined to take care of himself. I think he was one of those that wanted to be sure everything was taken care of. Later he worked on the railroad, and he assembled a group of men, and they would offer themselves as a team, a platoon or whatever you call it, gang. And he was a section foreman. He, we talked to him about this once. What did they do and how did they make the money and everything. And I said, "Did they make enough money?" And he said, "Well, a lot of the men that came over on those gangs were sending everything back to Japan to support their family." And he said, "So a lot of them were trying to save by eating practically nothing." And we said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, they'd make soup with bacon and flour and rice and that was pretty much..." he said, "but that was not a good meal," he said, "but people did that and that's why they got sick and everything." And he said he didn't believe that was a good thing. And, but when he was relieved of his, or finished his section, he received this letter from the roadmaster. And he kept this letter because it said to him that he had done a, he felt, said he had done a good job, that they would welcome him back when he got another group, and they would find a place for him. So he always kept that as, that he had done a good job.

TI: And so for him to be the section leader, he was kind of a leader. He had leadership qualities so that other men would work with him?

ST: Well, I think so. You know, when you come to think of that generation that came over, they were all pretty much rebels in a way. They, and especially, I think he was because he came from a comfortable family. It wasn't that he was coming over here to find some way to live. He was, you know, he had been in a comfortable situation, although there was probably nothing for him to do in Japan. See, that was, he lived on a farm and he probably had no, you know, didn't know what else he could go to, because Japan was pretty limited class-wise and everything. And at that time, he was educated probably more than the average person even in the United States, and yet he only, he finished what would be, we would consider eighth grade. But that was considered fairly educated at that time. Even in the United States, a lot of children still did not read and write.

TI: And maybe a little bit older than the other men, too. At twenty-four, twenty-five, many of them were probably more twenty to twenty-two.

ST: Yeah, that's true. That's probably true. But he didn't speak English. I really don't know how he managed this because all his life, he's never been, he never was fluent in English. And, but he had a store and everything, dry goods store, men's furnishings, and customers and everything. But he managed to get by, you know. It's amazing how that generation did things.

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