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TI: Okay, so Fred, today is February 25, 2010, and we're in Culver City doing this interview. Running the camera is Dana Hoshide, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so, Fred, I'm going to just start by asking you, can you tell me when you were born and where you were born?

FH: I like to say that I was born with a bang on December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day. So happened I was born many years before Pearl Harbor. That was 1941, but I was 1914, the same digits turned around.

TI: Oh, interesting. You just change the one and four...

FH: One and four to four, one. But anyhow, I was born in a place called Yamato Colony. It's a first successful -- I use the word "successful" because it wasn't the first Japanese colony in the entire United States, but it's the most successful, oldest Japanese colony, and it still survives, still goes on. And the name Yamato Colony is in the tax rolls at Merced County, a place called Livingston, California, northern California, Central Valley.

TI: Oh, good. So I want to learn about this, but let's talk about your parents because I want to find out how you got to Yamato Colony.

FH: Okay.

TI: So let's talk about your father first.

FH: Thank you for asking, because I didn't know too much about my father. But as I talk to people, I learned this much: that my father was one of the first colonists from San Francisco that went to a place called Livingston and started Yamato Colony in 1906, the year of the earthquake and fire in San Francisco. And so he and his, few other people, happened to be members of the Japanese YMCA of San Francisco. I also researched that and found that San Francisco YMCA, through the influence of people like Mr. Abiko, Kyutaro Abiko, who was also from the same ken, Niigata-ken of Japan. And so that's how my father was Niigata, and he was a dirt farmer in Livingston, California, was a pioneer, started Yamato Colony.

TI: Do you know why he started Yamato Colony?

FH: Well, yes, I got to know the Abikos because I lived with them for one year after I left Livingston in 1929. And so I learned that he was very much interested, that the Japanese immigrants have a chance in this country. And he was watching what happened, and he said, 'The only way that we're gonna survive is if we put roots into American soil." Up to this point, most of the immigrants were just seasonal workers, and they would earn lots of money or whatever they earned, they'll blow it all up in a few years, party or something like that, and then they have to start all over again following the crops. So this is why he said, "For our future," the Japanese future in America. And that's why many came here, some came here to make their riches and take it home. But many came for a new life, a better chance. And then they wanted to start families. The only way they could do that was to establish a colony, roots, in American soil. So he decided that he would get together a group of people to finance it, and he started a kind of a bank. I don't know the Japanese word for these corporations that he started, but he had an American lawyer that worked for the Bank of America that helped him. And through that connection, Abiko, that reason was to start a colony of farming. And farming was big. In Japan, too, I guess if you owned land, you were doing okay. And so he, then we found out, he found out that troubles, owning land in the state of California, especially at that time, labor laws. But 1906, he was able to put together a corporation, and a corporation is not a Japanese. It's an entity.

TI: Oh, interesting. So he got around that by forming a corporation.

FH: Exactly.

TI: So the corporation owned the land.

FH: That's correct, and the corporation has rights to own land. And so the corporation would buy three thousand acres of land, and then they divided up the land in 40 acres, 20 acres, and the Japanese farmers could then borrow money from the bank, and then mortgage their farm and start farming. And they borrowed money also from this corporation, and that's how my father got started. Well, he needed to get a wife, not too many women --

TI: Well, before we go there, so about how large was the group? Three thousand acres is a lot.

FH: Yes. That was in this place called Livingston. Three thousand acre is, well, it is large. But there were some farms, ten thousand acres for one farm. And so three thousand is a drop in the bucket.

TI: But do you know about how large the Yamato group was?

FH: Well, at the time, I don't know how many. I saw some pictures at Yamato Colony, and I saw a room that was called the YMCA room. And so they used to meet just to discuss and maybe have a prayer meeting, and the Yamato Colony was considered to be only for Christians, or at least it's the Christian community, that was the name. And the reason was, the YMCA started it, and therefore, so I tell people, you asked me my birth. I say that I was born into the YMCA from the very get-go.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, because of your, later on we'll get into it, but your...

FH: Yeah. And then that was 1906, my father started it with some other men. I still remember some of those men, Okui, Minabe, Naka and Tanji. I still remember, that was ninety-five years ago. [Laughs]

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