<Begin Segment 10>

TI: I'm sorry, so describe the house. I mean, how much were you able to do in 1941?

HM: Well, we built a big, our house was real tall, way up high because the intention was they were gonna build another room to prepare to ship their produce, so they were gonna build a room downstairs where they can rest in the day, so the house was really high. I don't remember any neighbor's house as high as ours. So my father had this wide view of the future, so he built a big house, so we were real proud. The three of girls had a huge bedroom and Mom and Pops had a small room, but they built three of us big bedrooms, my parents did. And as Mom, as a very, she was quiet and very atamaii, smart, she built, if I know Mom well, she would have never bought furniture for the house, for the living room, but, because I remember zabuton all over the place, Mom would've never bought furniture. I'm sure Mom, but how she built our dresser -- oh, when we were growing up oranges and apple came in wooden crates, that she made dresser for us. And how did she dress it up? She bleached the rice bags and she made curtains for the, so that's, Mom did that for three of us. So what, but we had our own bed, because when we lived in Waipahu we lived in such a small house, so we all had to sleep on the floor. Oh boy, those days not everybody had beds, and we were real happy we had our own beds.

TI: So you were pretty happy with the house, your room, your bed.

HM: Yeah, I was, growing up, but I didn't really think... and I can't tell you that I was happy moving down there, but what we got after that, none of my friends had that, not even my cousins. So I was happy.

TI: And when did you move into the house?

HM: In August just before, I mean, August before school opened.

TI: Okay, so August 1941. And now tell me about the neighborhood. Who were your neighbors, who else was living down there?

HM: Well, we had the Hoshides that was across the street about a quarter mile away from us, but they were, they were poultrymen, so I could hear the chickens. And the Yamadas lived, we couldn't see them at all, but the Yamadas had poultry, but their farm was huge, so that's all we heard from Yamadas was the chicken. But no neighbors in the back. And --

TI: And -- go ahead.

HM: And then couldn't see the other neighbors. We could see Hoshides because they were about a quarter mile away from us. We could see them. But the Yamadas, no. And then we could smell the pigs. We couldn't see them because they were so far away, but the smell we got. So we were gonna be real farmers, I think. [Laughs]

TI: And do you know what your father was planning? So he --

HM: He wanted to be a truck farmer. That means raising vegetables, so that's when I said, "Dad, you're a railroad man. You don't know the difference between..." [Laughs] But I'm sure that, I'm sure they would have been successful. I'm sure they would have.

TI: Okay, and in terms of, so you moved in right before school, were you then going to the same school you went before?

HM: No, we, because Waipahu, you see, from, the only high school that was in, out in the country was Waipahu High School, so kids from Aiea down to Waianae came to Waipahu. So there weren't such thing as buses, so we had arrangements to go to school with the Yamada's children -- the Hoshides, the kids were still little -- so we went to school late every day because they, Yamada's children had to do their chores. We had no chores because we didn't have any, nothing there as yet, so we had to wait for the Yamadas to pick us up, so we went to school late every day. Because Yamadas children had to do their chores first. I didn't care. [Laughs] So from Puuloa we went to Waipahu High School.

TI: And during this time, when your father's building the house and the lot, is he still working as --

HM: A railroad man, uh-huh. He wasn't, I guess he had no intention of quitting until he had something going, otherwise we won't, we can't eat.

TI: So that's a lot of work this time, for the whole family.

HM: Oh, yes. I hated weekends. Oh, boy, I hated weekends. And then I don't even remember using gloves to pick up those corals. Of course, they weren't big, but that was work.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.