<Begin Segment 4>

MN: Now, I know on the farm it was very common to have a outside ofuro. Did your farm have one of those?

LW: Oh yes, that was, I know that that was one of the first things that my, my dad and mom built so that they could have the, enjoy the ofuro.

MN: Who was responsible for cutting the wood and getting it going?

LW: Well, we had enough wood from the fig trees, and the fig trees would have to be pruned and bundled up and the branches and, fig branches were cut up to produce the fire for the ofuro.

MN: Now can you describe what your ofuro was made out of?

LW: It was large enough for two people to enjoy and it was made of stainless steel with, deep enough when you sat it would come up to your shoulders, above your shoulders right up to your chin. So it was made of stainless steel and the stainless steel was important because we built a fire right underneath the bathtub and in order to heat the water, so the steel was good for building the fire underneath and then for, when the water got hot we sat on a thin platform of wood to avoid the hot bottom of the tub.

MN: Was this an outside, was this an enclosed area, the ofuro?

LW: Yes, we had a bathhouse, ofuro. One area was for dressing and undressing, and the other area contained the tub where we could rinse off, wash ourselves before climbing into the tub, so that was really nice.

MN: And was it a very traditional way that your family practiced, with the father going first and then the males?

LW: Yes, it was, because I remember when I was a little kid the first ones into the tub were my dad, and then he would bring me in so the two of us could enjoy together, but then after we finished, then the rest of the family was able to get into the tub.

MN: Now, what about your outhouse?

LW: Oh yes, that was an important part of the, the farm family. Plumbing wasn't in, in use at that time, and so they... both the ofuro and the next thing was the outhouse, a separate building in the same area away from the house.

MN: Did you have toilet paper as we know it today?

LW: No. Like most families, we had both newspaper and a Sears-Roebuck catalog.

MN: Did you folks use a Japanese newspaper by any chance?

LW: I don't remember Japanese newspaper. I'm not sure that I ever saw a Japanese newspaper. We always, my dad was good at English, so he always had an English newspaper. But later on when the Japanese language papers started to be published, I'm sure he subscribed to, to the language papers.

MN: Well, the reason why I ask is some, I know some farmers who had Japanese newspapers, and sometimes they used it for toilet paper and the Emperor's picture might be on there, so they would have problems sometimes. Let's see now, your farm had a, very unique, it had a cow.

LW: Oh yeah. That, my dad, that's why I say my dad was a kind of, he broke the pattern of immigrant Japanese farmers because he had his cow because it was important to have milk for the family and milk produced not only milk, but it produced butter, cream and butter, so that was an early part of our lives, to have milk and butter that came from our own cow.

MN: How do you make butter?

LW: Well, my mom and, was very good at taking the, getting the fresh milk that was just milked and then letting it settle for a while, and then the cream would come to the top of the milk, and she would scrape off the cream, accumulate enough cream to put into a butter churn, and that was one of our, my early experience to churn butter. And by churning the butter, then the skim milk and the butter would separate, and then my mother would have, mold the buttercream into butter.

MN: Does this butter taste like the butter we buy in the grocery stores?

LW: Well no, I think it was, it had its own flavor, very distinct flavor. Course, I couldn't compare, since I didn't, we didn't have butter, if we ran short of butter it was oleo, margarine, so margarine and butter were very different. So I don't ever remember tasting regular grocery butter. It was always butter that my, my mother and the rest of us made.

MN: Now, what about mules, did you have mules on your farm to cultivate?

LW: Oh yeah. That was a necessity for farmers, to have draft animals that could do the heavy work, plowing and hauling, so we had two mules that were regular, they were part of the farm family equipment that was necessary.

MN: When did the tractor come in, and did you get rid of the mules once you got a tractor?

LW: We had both. My dad had both, the mules, and the tractors came in quite a bit later. One of the early pictures that I, we have is of my dad sitting on the old Fordson tractor. That was one of his first purchases, mechanized equipment that he purchased, and I think at that time I must've been around five or six years old when he, I remember seeing that tractor.

MN: How old were you when you learned to drive the tractor?

LW: Well, by the time I learned to drive the tractor was about the same time I learned to drive a, the farm car. I must've been about fourteen, fifteen years of age when I began to drive the, drive the tractor. That was a job I looked forward to, which was, you could do the farm work while you were sitting and driving rather than out shoveling with a, the hard work, shoveling with a shovel and doing heavy back work, so it was always a joy when I had the job of running the tractor.

MN: Now, did any of you or your siblings visit Japan before the war?

LW: No. My siblings did. I think my mother, I mean, my brother and my sister were, when they, soon after they were born they made a trip to Japan. I guess my, my brother must've been about five years old and my sister, the next sister, was probably under two or three when they visited Japan. And I'm sure my mom and dad were proud of their children and wanted to show their families in Japan that, of their, of their newly born children. But the rest of us, I think they were the only two that went to Japan as children.

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