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SI: Then when we moved to town, my parents were so unsuccessful that they started a, they were cooking for a large sharecrop farm, three meals a day -- six o'clock, twelve o'clock and six o'clock in the evening. They'd make dinner during the harvest and planting seasons for forty to fifty people, just the two of them. They did all the dish washing with one cold water faucet, cooked in big woks with wood fire, and did this seven days a week for, at that time I think the salary was very good, but they, I think, got fifty dollars or sixty dollars a month to do this.

SF: These people who were being served, are they Nihonjins, or Japanese, or were they mixed?

SI: They were some Japanese migrant workers, but mostly they were Filipinos. They were Filipinos and a mixture of Japanese. There were no other ethnic groups, just Filipinos and Japanese. These people would go around from farm to farm or they'd go to certain farms in the summer and in the fall, and do the various jobs that were necessary. It was a very -- even to me -- it was very interesting childhood. I like to think that whatever I do, I do it because I find something interesting about it, and I've carried this throughout my life with everything I've done. But as I look back, I think it was, I tried to make the most of the situation that we had, and I tried to make it worth my while.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.