<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So the three older, they were in Japan, so it wasn't as crowded as having seven kids. Let's talk about, a little bit about your childhood memories of growing up. What are some things that you did growing up?

JT: Well, you know, my father, after he got through the rice, he moved over here on the north side of Gridley, and he started to clear land. And I remember, I was just a little kid, too, and I remember him. And we were going out there, tried to help. Of course, we just got in the way, but we was trying to help. And they were removing oak trees to clear the land. And I remember one time they stuck dynamite to blow the roots out of the ground. And the dynamite didn't go off. And they waited for a long time, and finally they thought, well, the fuse is out, and it's not gonna explode. So they started to walk toward there and it did explode. And the piece of wood, of course, was blown out, and it hit my father in the leg. And I remember that because we had to level land, and we never had the tractor or something. This was all done by a team of horses, and he walked behind with a scraper, and he would scrape land he dumped it to the low spot. And then we lived close to an irrigation canal...

TI: You know, going back to that accident with your father, how badly was he injured with that piece of wood?

JT: It broke skin, and it was embedded in his thigh. It was right there on the thigh, and I don't know if it was the left side or right side. It was a piece of wood, piece of root about six, seven inches long, and maybe about an inch, inch and a half in diameter. But it went through his clothes and stuck into his leg. So dynamite was one thing you're not supposed to play with.

TI: It must have been terrifying for you as a child to see that happen.

JT: Well, I was too young to know things like being terrified or anything. All I know, there was a large explosion and my dad got hurt. And there was a canal, irrigation canal beside the house there that irrigated not only our place, but the canal was about four or five feet deep when, real deep. And during the regular time, it was only about two or three feet deep. And our project during every winter was to make it deeper. This was our swimming hole. And in the meantime, the county had started a junkyard right close to our property. And being kids, somebody would come in and dump something, we'd go out there and scavenge through there and we found some dynamite, we found some ammunition. And I remembered the dynamite thing my father went through, but we found some dynamite, and this was old dynamite, and it had blisters on the side of it. And I later learned that this was nitro glycerin, this dynamite is. So, anyhow, when we picked it up, it was real damp. And we took it home, 'cause we're gonna use this dynamite. We already had this thing all thought out, that we was going to use this dynamite to deepen this swimming hole. We couldn't buy dynamite, 'cause they wouldn't sell it to us in the first place, and we were too young to buy dynamite. So we couldn't get, but here was this supply of dynamite. And we took it home, we took it all apart, and it was (damp) -- I mean, it was all soaked with water, so we stuck it in the oven to dry it. [Laughs] Well, I'm still here yet. So anyway, the guy says, "You know, you guys did something that most people wouldn't even be here now to be talking about." This thing could have went off. We did things like that, but we did get a swimming hole, and we got the thing deep enough that we can have no problem with the diving board. Because we learned to swim in the canal, we were all good swimmers. We were fast. I mean, we could swim against the current. And in those days, the city of Gridley had a municipal swimming pool, and I think they called it the Pioneer Day, they opened the pool and they had races and stuff. All the Japanese kids, the one that lived in that row, there was about four or five families that lived in that row, they all had kids and all learned to swim in the canal. And they were all good swimmers, so we won almost every race.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.