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TI: So we talked about the social, earlier you mentioned especially in the Filipino camp, there are lots of bachelors, so was there things like lots of gambling and things with the bachelors?

YI: Well, they raised fighting cocks, so they used to have... that's where the cock fights were, you know.

TI: So would you go up there and watch that too?

YI: No, you know, we were told not to go. I mean, the Filipinos had a kind of a bad reputation, they're known to be kind of temperamental and... I mean, the kind of activities they had. And so they're all housed in one area, the bachelors, but I used to go. My mom used to do laundry for the... she used to take in laundry to supplement the income and because they worked six days a week so I'll go and pick up the laundry at Saturday afternoon, bring the laundry home. And you have to boil the laundry, you know, with that, they call it a lard soap, but that's the only way you get all the... you know, they wear the same clothes one week, okay, so the thing, I mean, would stand like this. And then we would kind of boil it overnight, then the next day we'd pound it to get all the clothes clean. And then starch it, you got to dry it and then you got to do all that on a Sunday, you know, and the reason you starch it so that you know, the grime would come off easily. Those were the days where you used hinoshi, you never heard of hinoshi? Hi de nosu. Today the kids don't know it, even in Japan when you talk about hinoshi they don't know about it. It's an iron that you put in coal, hot coal.

TI: Oh, I see.

YI: The hinoshi, and then... but you know, it rains on Sunday, it takes you about three times to iron the, starch clothes with... still damp. That was my job, to burn firewood to keep the charcoal going.

TI: Oh, so you were busy on Sundays then, just helping your mother?

YI: Yeah, I don't know when I started, but see, there's a difference in age between my older sister above me, four years. So when, let's see, when I went to intermediate, she already started high school so she moved in town, you know, and worked her way through high school. And my oldest sister was in Japan so I was the oldest.

TI: So you had to do that work?

YI: I had to do it, yeah.

TI: And then you had to get the clothes back to the workers by Sunday --

YI: That evening, well, as soon as it was done. So if it rained, then it would be that evening.

TI: You know, the other question, so you were there for a long time. Was there ever any like labor unrest, you know, where the workers didn't like what was going on?

YI: That was before my time because I think there was a strike in... right after the first World War I think, you know, 1920, 1921. There was a big strike, all the, again, most of the Japanese left the sugar plantation, maybe you need to read about that, you find something. All accounts on that at the JCCH, Brian can tell you about it.

TI: But your time there was --

YI: No, there was, this was after the war I think, '46, '47, that's when the employees became unionized. There were no unions, I think it was 1947 or '47, the first. So they struck, you know, to go through the unionization process.

TI: So let me go back to you and your schooling because you mentioned you went to Waipahu for two years, your I think freshman, sophomore year and then you transferred to Mid-Pacific Institute, so why did you transfer?

YI: They wanted, I guess, better schooling for me because I was the oldest son. So Japanese family favored the oldest son. But unfortunately I started MPI in September 1941 as a junior and then Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, so being in a boarding school they told us all to go home, one that the building needed to be blacked out.

TI: But before we go to December 7th, just tell me, I know you weren't there that long before the war started, but describe what it was like going to MPI. What was it... a boarding school so this was kind of new to you?

YI: Yeah, but I had classmates there already who started earlier. And then some older kids, one year or two older than me that were there but this was primarily the merchant's kids. So I would say that I was one of the earlier ones that went to a private school, a boarding school.

TI: From the plantation? So how did they treat the plantation kids? Did they look at you differently because you're from plantation versus someone else?

YI: No, there was none of that, none of that, except in, you know, we competed, you know, between the danburo kids and plantation kids, you know, like baseball and stuff. We formed our own teams in the camps and they had their own teams, you know.

TI: And then how was that because were like the plantation kids better at sports or about the same?

YI: About the same. And then, you know, that competition carried through to school so we used to play it during recess, right. Always it would be, you know, that kind of a mild segregation, the camp kids and... but nothing serious, I mean, I guess that kind of segregation was acceptable, I think. I mean, we never got in fights or something.

TI: So it kind of more a friendly kind of grouping that you knew the camp kids so you would stick together and do things but it wasn't like, be like gangs where you would fight against each other. Nothing like that, okay, more like friendly.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.