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TI: Okay, so let's talk about your childhood growing up in the plantation. What are some memories that you have?

YI: Well, let's go back a little bit. My family, after I was born, they decided to go back to Japan. One was that my sisters were old enough and they wanted to start them in the Japanese school system. So I celebrated my first birthday in Japan, in the Takata-gun. I think we were there about eight months but conditions in Japan was still, you know, depressed so they decided to come back to Hawaii once more and then make some money and then go back but they never had the stake. Well, I always tell people that we didn't feel deprived being raised in a plantation. I don't know about the other plantations but I think it's the same, you know, they say that when you're poor you don't what is poor, what poor means. That's the way it was. I mean, we had enough to eat, I mean, you know.

TI: Well, and everyone around you was the same.

YI: We all had our own garden to raise vegetable, most of us raised chicken and so as far as, you know, we were not deprived food-wise. And the plantation provided a lot for the employees. Well, when I was born we didn't have electricity, we were using kerosene lamps so naturally the stove was also a kerosene stove. If you wanted your own bathhouse, a furoba, plantation would, providing that, you know, had enough space in the yard, they'll come and build you one furoba, you know. And during the off season, you know, when they're not... they have what they call an off season where they have to do the, repair the mill. So that's when they don't do any harvesting. That's when the employees used to go and do maintenance, the homes, or go to cut firewood to distribute to the employees, deliver kerosene and you know, somehow we all ended up with fifty gallon drums that they would come and fill.

TI: How large was the plantation? How many, like, people lived there?

YI: It's hard to say. It's a couple thousand I think.

TI: A couple thousand. And were most of the people in families or were there lots of bachelor men or how would that --

YI: Okay, I think most of the plantation used the same arrangement. They segregated the employees by race so actually the Japanese camp was the biggest. Next was the Filipino. I guess in the Filipino case, well, maybe about one-third of that were families and the other two-thirds were all bachelors. By the time I was growing up, very few Chinese, you know, Chinese were the first one to a finish the contract and they moved into town and they started their own business. That's why the Chinese are so well-to-do today, they're the business people. And very few Koreans, the rest were Portuguese or Spanish people that came from Europe. The Europeans, because, you know, they're bigger, they handled the mules and they handled the train, they drove the trucks.

TI: So you mentioned the Japanese camp was the largest.

YI: Largest, yeah.

TI: And, you know, the Filipino was maybe one-third family, two-thirds bachelors. So the Japanese, were there very many bachelors in the Japanese?

YI: Very few.

TI: Okay, so it was mostly families.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.