<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay, so you return to California. Was this back to the Pomona area?

BS: No, we went, actually, we had no place to stay and so my father got a army squad tent, which is, I don't know how, very small, twelve feet by twelve feet or something like that, and he put it up in the backyard of our former landlord, right across the street from where we used to live. And I guess my father, I don't know, was trying to get our farm back or we had our stuff stored in the shed. They were all gone. I don't remember hardly anything about living in that tent. I think that just got blocked out of my mind. I tried to get some information from my, from my brother and sister, but they don't remember hardly anything at all. But boy, I'm telling you, we lived in that tent. I don't know how we survived. We had to go to the bathroom and cook and eat and... so anyway, we found this farm in Pomona, so we went there and it was just an old shack, so, so we got, we started farming again and it was a big struggle. I guess we didn't have that much money and it gets, it takes money to start a farm. We had a icebox, I remember. Every day this white man would come with a big cake of ice on his shoulder and come into the house and put it in the icebox. See, this was right after the war and you couldn't buy appliances, no refrigerator or washing machine or anything like that. And we had no washing machine, so I remember getting a washtub and making a fire underneath it to make warm water for my mother to do the laundry. We had one of those old style Japanese bath house, just a little house and in it was a tin tub, might measure three feet by five, six feet. I remember I had to light the fire, firewood. That was my chore. Before dinner, light the fire. Boy, that was really something.

TI: When you, when you remembered that you got a little emotional about doing that.

BS: Well, that's something, yeah, that we did. We didn't, there was no gas, natural gas line going to the, our farm.

TI: But we've gone kind of through your life and it almost sounds like this, this period right now may have been the hardest.

BS: It is. I think after camp, so far as I'm concerned, as my interpretation of what happened, was the worst part of my experience. I think it started, well, I guess somehow, I was told not to speak Japanese in public, getting on that bus to Idaho, living in the house, that train ride to California, how we lived in Pomona, and not only we, we had this shack and then we had this garage, open garage like... a friend came looking for a place to stay and they saw that garage, it was just a open garage where we put our tractor and some stuff there, and gee, they, I don't know if my father said it was okay for them to come or not, but they came over and they started to fix up that place and they moved in. And then after a few months they found a better place, so they left. As soon as they left, I guess word got around that there's a place at Sakatani's place, open house. It's just a junky old place. Then another family came, lookin' for a place, and so they moved in. And then they had a relative that didn't have a place, so they moved in and they worked for us. And then they moved out. They found a better place. And then another family came in, always word getting around about our open place. And then another family came, driving in this 1935 Chevrolet coupe, just a front-seater, but behind the seat was this ledge. They cut out the ledge so that a couple of kids could sit there and they put some benches. They were in Idaho with us, so they came driving down looking for a place. So we had this, another shed, just a small shed, so they moved in there, so we let them farm some of our acreage. And then we were using our tractor during the day, so then they would use the tractor at night. We put headlights on the tractor. But I'm telling you, those... well, we got through that.

TI: This was, as hard as it was for you, it sounds like other families had it even harder.

BS: Yeah. We had it pretty good compared to others. But there were, well, we, we just... that's the way it was. We didn't protest or nothing.

TI: But so much is made of, of the camp experience, but I think what you just shared is, in some cases -- and I've heard this with other people -- it was really after the camps was, was the hardest time, that because one, a lot was taken away when you had to leave your homes initially, and in living in the camps you had food and housing, but then after that you were just left on your own with nothing, and that was such a hard time especially for the Issei.

BS: Right. You know, and I didn't hear my parents complain or anything like that. I think what we went through was just what happens when countries go, go to war, and Japan is the enemy country so it seems like they accepted it as just the way it was in those days. And so even we Niseis, we didn't know any better, so I guess we just went along with it, too. We were pretty stupid.

TI: I wouldn't say stupid. I think, you know, it was just, you weren't really given much, much other, many other choices. I mean, I think you were put in that situation.

BS: Yeah, you're right. We had no other choices. Well, we just thought differently in those days than people today.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.