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TI: Before we talk about more of the family life, I wanted to talk about your father because your father died when you were quite young.

HU: Yeah.

TI: So you were, I think, two, about two and a half.

HU: Two and a half.

TI: What, what happened to your father?

HU: Oh, he smoked too much. (...) I used to admire those Issei people not because (...) of their perseverance, hard work and all the guts and determination that they (had) -- but when I was a kid (...) they were my heroes because they used to roll Bull Durham with one hand (while they plowed the field). I used to watch them plow and they're holding this plow, the two horses in front, they're holding this plow and they have this rein around their shoulders, and then, and they have this Bull Durham, which cost about five cents a package, and on the side they had this thin paper and (on the string top) and somehow they used to manipulate that thing with one hand. They used to put the tobacco in the paper and they would roll it up (with two fingers). They had these big old matches (and) they would swipe that thing against their ass and then light it up. They were my heroes in those days, and I remember going home and cutting up a newspaper and putting the dried up grape leaf in there and smoking them and and even today I could smell that smoke. [Laughs] But anyway, my old man, he smoked too much.

TI: But that image, I want to go back to that image. So, so these men were plowing, not stopping, and they're able with one hand to, in their mouth to, to make a cigarette, put it in their mouth, and smoke it without missing a beat in the plowing?

HU: Right. Right, yeah.

TI: And you thought that was just such a cool thing.

HU: Oh, that's a cool thing, yeah. [Laughs]

TI: So your father, was it, like, lung cancer or something like that?

HU: Yeah, probably had lung cancer and the he, in the, at the vineyard, they would start trimming, pruning around January, when it was cold, and then after that he would be plowing all day. When they plowed, they'd go plowing this much space at a time, so you, you're going back and forth and back and forth, and then after they plow it, they would go over it with a disc, disc to sort of level it, I guess to chop up the sod, and then after that they would harrow, they call it harrow. It's a round thing like that with spike and as, as they pull it, it kind of turns around and makes it smooth, and after that they would go dig the ditches. So it involved (months of) labor, so from January to May. He died May the 5th, and so May 5th he finished everything. He plowed it, he made the ditch ready for irrigation, everything, and I guess that's when he, and during that time he had pneumonia, but his spirit was up and then when he finished everything, I guess, you know, he relaxed and then he went to bed and he never woke up.

TI: Wow, so he just, he worked up to the, almost to the day he died. Interesting.

HU: Yeah.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.