<Begin Segment 19>
SF: Another big kind of, I think, institution or event in the community were, were the Kenjinkai picnics. You can all tell us a little bit about those.
TS: That was an annual thing, huh?
YM: Yeah. Well, our Kenjin was so small, but we used to have picnics, family picnics as families. But after the war, we didn't have too many.
SF: Where did, where did you, where, like your ken hold their picnic?
YM: I can't remember. Like Lake Wilderness?
CK: Oh yeah, Lake Wilderness.
TS: Lincoln Park.
CK: Lincoln Park.
YM: Lincoln Park. Lake Wilderness was quite a ways out there. But Lincoln Park was just up on West Seattle. And Jefferson Park...
TS: Yeah.
YM: Which -- where the golf course across the street from it, where the Jefferson Field House is and where the, where the --
TS: Driving range is.
YM: Yeah. Right there, we used to have the picnics there, as well as Japanese school picnic was there, too.
TS: Yeah.
SF: What were the kind of typical activities that people would --
CK: Oh, tug of war, and races.
YM: Races. And...
TS: Ice cream cone on the head.
CK: Yeah.
TS: Batting.
CK: And tossing the egg, or things like that.
YM: Watermelon...
CK: Watermelon bust.
YM: Bust, yeah..
SF: Did the Issei women go to a lot of trouble?
YM: Oh, yes.
CK: Oh, yeah. Making bento.
YM: They'd get up early, maybe 4, 5 o'clock, and then make the sushis and whatever and bento and vegetables and so forth.
SF: So did families sort of go around and sort of sit on each other's blankets and share food?
CK: Yeah.
SF: Did many Isseis drink at those kind of --
YM: Oh, I'm sure they did.
TS: Oh, yeah. The men.
CK: Yeah. Very few women I knew drank.
SF: Were there a lot of cases of where the Issei guys would drink too much so it'd be an embarrassment to the family?
TS: Oh, yeah. That's happened.
CK: That was sometimes.
TS: Yeah.
CK: But not that often, I don't think.
SF: Was alcohol in general much of a problem in the community in those, those days?
YM: I don't think so. But I've heard one lady, acquaintance of our family, that her husband drank quite a bit, to the point of seeing bugs.
CK: Oh, really?
TS: My dad drank.
YM: But you don't hear -- they kept it within themselves.
CK: Yeah.
YM: Not too much. But...
SF: Do you think that those people who did drink too much drank because of something about their, their life there? That it was difficult and this was kind of a way to deal with that, or --
YM: Life was --
CK: Oh, it could've been, as a single people, being lonely, things like that. Well, what I think we wanna say is that you rarely found a Japanese Issei drunk on the streets, like some of the drunkards. I don't think, I don't think of, I can't think of a time that I saw a person that drunk that was a Japanese person.
SF: They just had too much pride to --
CK: I think so, yeah. Even though they knew they were alcoholics, they'd keep it within the house, I think.
YM: I know there'd be drinking parties at these Kinka Low (restaurant), and, upstairs of our store, and they'd have pretty happy times up there.
TS: They used to do singing.
YM: Oh, yeah.
<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.