<Begin Segment 3>

MN: Okay, you grew up on Terminal Island.

CH: Yes.

MN: Which prefecture did Terminal Islands come from?

CH: What?

MN: What prefecture?

CH: Oh, what prefecture? All the majority of that people from Terminal Island is Wakayama-ken, okay, fifty percent. Other, maybe twenty-five percent was from Miye-ken. And the other percent was from Shizuoka, and the rest is all different prefecture, maybe two or three families. Like Tottori-ken and Okinawa-ken and Miyagi-ken, very few Hiroshima and Kumamoto. Oh, Kagoshima. All different people were, that's why Terminal Island Japanese got all mixed up like that, from all different place, we talk different kind of Japanese language, you know, a little bit. When I went Japan, they didn't understand what I was talking about, especially northern Japan.

MN: Now, both of your parents worked. What did they do?

CH: Where? In Japan or here?

MN: Terminal Island.

CH: Terminal Island, well, of course, ninety percent, I'd say maybe seventy-five percent, well, eighty percent, they're all fishermen. And fifteen percent was maybe merchant, and other people was, well, they do all different kind of work. But they got few, we had merchant over there. We had lot of merchant in the chop suey and drugstore, shoe store.

MN: So your father was a fisherman.

CH: My father was a fisherman, and my mama, mother was working the cannery. All the tuna you guys eat, canned tuna? They stuff 'em up, cut the tuna and stuff 'em up.

MN: Now, when there was no fish at the cannery, what did your mother do?

CH: My mother went, you know where Palos Verdes is, in the south, south coast? What do you call that? The Torrance and Gardena area?

MN: South Bay.

CH: South Bay. South Bay, Dominguez Hills, yeah, and Gardena, all farmers. All Japanese, remember, they were all farmers. It's not like today, all farmers, they'd go pick strawberries, number one, it was strawberries. And beans and corn and onions, topping. That's what they did. That was the time, slow time. Slow time. So they always had work. That was Depression era, you know.

MN: Did your mother take you?

CH: Huh?

MN: To the farms? Did your mother take you to the farms?

CH: Oh, yeah, I was young that way, you know, I used to tag along. It wasn't fun for me, they were, stay in the field, you know.

MN: It was Depression era. What did you eat? Did you have enough to eat?

CH: Depression era, hey, you out on the sea, what do you find over there? Chicken and rabbit, everything in the sea? What do you think you're gonna eat? Fish. Fish is, we got number three, you know, remember, that's why we don't have heart attack. That's why we eat nothing but fish. No vegetable, up to the farmer, we used to trade fish and, you know, things. Of course, a few people had chicken later on. Eating, we didn't have no problem, but when it comes to clothing, that's another story. We used to buy that eipuron pantsu, we used to call that. Eipuron pantsu.

MN: Yeah, what is that eipuron pantsu?

CH: Eipuron pantsu, is that the pronunciation? We didn't know how to talk English, remember? Nothing much, all Japanese, that was talking Nihongo, eipuron pantsu. We buy that thing and my mother, we used to play a lot of marbles. Put a patch, brand-new eipuron pantsu, that was three-layer patch.

MN: Is that like a coverall?

CH: Yeah, coverall. Coverall is this way, you got a long sleeve. That thing got the string over here. Probably Tom don't know what eipuron pantsu is.

TI: No, I think it's, is it like the overalls with just the suspender-like things?

CH: Yeah, no shoulder, no sleeve.

MN: So all the kids wore eipuron pantsu.

CH: Eipuron pantsu. And shoe, we buy, we put, you know... maybe you guys don't remember the shoe, they would, you'd have a steel plate in front, kid-type, our kid-type. So the shoe don't wear out. Otherwise we'd go barefoot. The Terminal, where we come from, it's all sand. Only three feet above sea level, sea level. That's the place it was.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.