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MN: So how would you describe Terminal Island?

CH: Well, Terminal Island, Terminal Island is about one and a half mile wide, and about two and a half to three miles long. See, that was Terminal Island. And that was a sandbar during the 1800s, late 1800s when they came over, it was sandbar. That was Terminal Island. There was nothing over there. Of course, when I started remembering, there were a few houses, that was Terminal Island. Now, you're not talking about Terminal Island, now when we gonna talk about after the farm --

MN: No, describe Terminal Island for us.

CH: Okay. Like I said, mile and a half long, two and a half to three miles long, Terminal Island, and I called it, like I told you, "Enchanted Island." The best place in the world to live. Well, all these Terminal Island people, they didn't recognize that it was a real good place to live. Because Terminal Island was all the people, that community was one people. One fall and everything falls, everybody in Terminal Island. And, well, growing up over there, of course there was no crime. You didn't have to lock your door, nobody comes steal anything. One thing, Terminal Island, you know, all the people, you do something bad, everybody, they all come to the cannery to work and they gossip around. That's why they know. But growing up, Terminal Island, of course, we had almost five hundred students, two Caucasians, Russian immigrants that came from Russia to escape that Russian revolution they had, they came over, and they could talk just as good Japanese like us. They didn't know how to talk English. They talked Russian and Japanese. We talked little bit English and ninety percent Japanese, see. So first, when we had the school, when we went to school, we had kindergarten, okay. Morning class and day class, one year you got to go. So we go to first grade, we had little b-1 and big B-1. Second grade, we had B-1, B-1 and B-2. No, A-1 and A-2, B-1, it was the other way, half a semester, second one, second one. They put that one, extra one, 'cause we didn't know how to talk English. So that's why they emphasized in talking more English. That's why kindergarten to, we went about two years just to graduate from kindergarten, year and a half. That's why when I went to junior high school, supposed to be in junior high school, twelve years old, but we went there thirteen, most of the guys. So we went to junior high school, you know, at the school ground, we talked Japanese. So they gather all of us guys in the auditorium, and, "While you're in school ground, talk English." Yeah, okay. They ask you question and you know Japanese, "You want something?" He said, "You don't want something?" Said, "Yes, I don't want nothing." Over here you say, "No, no, I don't want it." That's the difference. That's why we got mixed up. That one little word, we got mixed up.

MN: Now, when you talked Japanese amongst yourself, is it Wakayama-ben?

CH: We talked that Terminal Island language.

MN: All mixture dialect.

CH: All mixed dialect, we talk, you know. But mostly Wakayama-ken. Majority were Wakayama-ken, so other people, they start talking to us. But Okinawa and Kagoshima people, I go to play with them, "Hey, your mother's Japanese, or what kind of Japanese you talking?" I didn't understand Okinawa and Kagoshima when I went, when we were growing up. But in Terminal Island growing up, there were so many young people, and not like you guys, city, L.A. or Seattle, you didn't have no fun. All you do is watch television and stay in the house, made a few friends that go here and there. I don't know what kind of life that you had, but like us guys, growing up, we had lot of fun playing with other kids. The number one fun growing up was we could look at the sword, sword-fighting movie. It's not like talking or, not like talking, we go. We had East Side gang, West Side gang, Candle Street gang, and Hokkaido gang, and Toma gang. We all played together, all competition, we had Olympic. We had Olympic, we had the best judo club, and the best kendo club, and we had the best, best swimming club. Swimming club, and we had two Nisei Week queens from Terminal Island. One, two? Two. And gee, that kind of place we went. Skin diving, skin diving to get crab and lobster, and we'd go spearing for fish, and you know what abalone is? We'd dive for abalone. And what kind of, and we'd go mountain skiing, mountain over there. Hey, we had a lot of fun. Of course there wasn't no television in them days. That's right, if you had television in them days, we'd all be inside watching television.

TI: And how would you decide to do all these things? Was it sort of like just the, your friends would say, "Let's go skin diving, let's go look for abalone?" Or were there adults there telling you what to do?

CH: Adult? No, we made our own fun. We made our fun. Of course, the hardest thing to do is we were pretty old already. Not old, but I think fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, see, around there. We're a little kind of kid. When I was maybe twelve years old, you know the tuna can, that cover? See, my mother used to pack the tuna inside that can, and then roll, it comes in a roll like that, they drop oil in there, they put the can. You know these cans come in a container like this, wrapped up in a paper about like that, all wrapped up. We used to go get, I used to go get that can, the wrapped up cover, go to that, not a beach, but wharf. We had a wharf, wharf, you know. I mean, you can't stand up because maybe fifteen or sixteen feet deep. So I get that can and any, all these, I gather about twenty-five thirty kids, and I throw the can, and each guy, I give him one penny. So I get the can and I throw it, all the kids jumping in, they grab one penny, you could buy fifteen caramel candy, you know, them days. So they used to run, down, down, then they come down like that in the water, they'd catch 'em like that. "Hey, I got four, I got five," I'd give 'em four cents or five cents or something like that. By that time, they got, all became a good swimmer and a good diver, just because of that. You know, you can't dive fifteen feet, young kid like that, but you know, they're so anxious to make one penny, they try like hell. By the time it come down, a lot of 'em fall down on the bottom, so they go all the way down. That's why Terminal Island, we had maybe, man, we had a couple hundred anyway, different areas. In the fish harbor now, it's not the beach, it's not a beach, you know, harbor. So all different places, all swimmers. That's why we got the best, we took the swimming champion L.A. L.A. had a swimming coliseum, coliseum swimming, Olympic stadium right there. Seattle, you never had that kind of thing, huh?

TI: Well, my father talks about, in a similar way, there was a ferry across Lake Washington, and people would throw pennies, and they would go dive for pennies do the same thing.

CH: You know, when I got maybe fifteen or sixteen, you know what a Matson line, M-boat, boat from Hawaii to over there, they four big ship, they dock at the Terminal Island dock, so we go over there, we dive, and you know, depart, we start screaming, "Throw out some money." Oh, they look and, hey, five cents, no penny. Five cents to fifty cents. And you look at those kids diving for money. See, they do that in Hawaii, so we knew about it, so we started doing it Terminal Island. And older people that come to Terminal Island, you know, Terminal Island now, when you come Terminal Island, there's funny kind of smell. It's a fertilizer smell. All the Caucasian people, when they come to Terminal Island, they pinch their nose. Say, "Hey, what's wrong?" "Something smell about this place." "Oh, it's a rotten fish," I tell 'em. 'Cause they had a big fertilizer plant over there. So I know there was a distinct odor, you know, smelling fish. But I remember when I'd go to San Pedro junior high and then high school, oh, there's Slavonian people, Italian people living in San Pedro. Terminal Island was all Japanese. When they come to the work, they get on the ferryboat and then they come to San Pedro, and we're coming from school, same smell. You could smell that odor, you know. So, see, that's how it smells, the Terminal Island. What a place. So growing up in Terminal Island, man, see, I was lucky. We went, I just graduated from high school, that's why, we're lucky. But these younger guy, they miss all the good fun. They come to city like that, hey, look at my kids there playing around. They didn't have any fun like we did.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.