<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So going back to your life, earlier you mentioned how your mom noticed, okay, so weeds are growing, so we can start doing, we can live here. So did your crops grow okay?

IH: Yeah, everything started growing, and then I started to clean up the outside and then make it all flat. Then we tried to do vegetable, oh, it's growing good. So again, we start to grow the vegetables.

TI: And how about the chickens and the honeybees?

IH: No, chickens... but honeybees, too, we broke, I mean, burned out, so didn't have. But we didn't starve. We had enough to eat. And during the war, too, the fertilizer, couldn't get 'em, so one day the farmer looking for the chicken manure, so you know, surprising, one bag of the chicken, exchange with rice, one bag.

TI: Wow, so fertilizer was so important to farmers that they would...

IH: That's a surprise. That's the reason. We were just lucky, chicken, we had a chicken.

TI: But after the war, I'm sorry, did you have the chickens?

IH: No.

TI: So how did you get fertilizer then?

IH: Oh, that's already, fertilizer is all inside the ground.

TI: I see. So your ground was already well-fertilized.

IH: Ground was really rich, so really grow. Everybody was surprising. Everything that we put in just...

TI: Now, why didn't you try to raise chickens again? I mean, you had the know-how and you knew how to do it, so why didn't you try to do maybe a few chickens?

IH: Too much time. Because I was still college. My brother is high school, and only my mother, my mother just enough for the, take care of the vegetable garden, that's the reason. And then that's not an easy job, that chicken farm.

TI: Okay, that makes sense.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.