<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Now Bainbridge Island is sort of a gorgeous, a gorgeous area in terms of, by the Puget Sound. Did you do a lot with the water? Were there things that were, like, water activities that you did growing up?

TK: You know what? Looking back now, my parents didn't care too much, but almost all summer long we spent time at the beach because it was only, the beach was only about a block away from where we lived. And we used to spend almost every afternoon there, and then about the only time that we were coming home is that, there was, there were some people that were working at the Bremerton shipyard and they had a boat that they used to use for commuting, and then when the boat used to come in around, I think they got off work about five and so their boat came in about six, and whenever we'd see that boat come in that's when we had to go home to, go home to dinner or something like that. [Laughs]

TI: It was sort of like your clock. [Laughs]

TK: It was our clock, yeah.

TI: Interesting. Well, so on the beach in the afternoons, what would, what would you and your friends do?

TK: Just go swimming or, I guess maybe go fishing or we used to make rafts and, I don't know, just, that was about the only thing we could do.

TI: How about things like clamming, or were there oysters, things like that?

TK: Yeah, we used to go clamming, but some of the neighbors that had the beachfront, they didn't like us to go clamming so that most of our clamming was done at night when the, and when the tide was low, and we used to go out there clamming. And every so often we would, they would yell at us or... [laughs] but I don't know. We had a lot of fun.

TI: How about things like nori, the...

TK: Seaweed?

TI: Picking seaweed, did you do any of that?

TK: Yeah, we, there was a place called Crystal Springs, and there was the brown seaweed and we used to pick it, I think it was in the spring. And that's probably, I still remember that seaweed and it's a lot better than any seaweed that we could get today.

TI: Yeah. No, I, I've talked to people and, yeah, they have fond memories of going seaweed picking and then drying it out.

TK: And drying it out, yeah.

TI: And they said it was so, it was so good.

TK: It was so good, yeah.

TI: But they don't do it anymore.

TK: No, they don't, I think it's, I think the water's too polluted or something. Yeah.

TI: But yeah, people talk about that. Anything else, like crabbing? Did you ever do crabbing and things like that, or salmon fishing?

TK: No, we didn't have any boat and so, no, we didn't do any... we did quite a bit of fishing off the pier for perch or rock cod or whatever. And we used to go down to, like at the Port Blakeley ferry dock, and that was about, I don't know, three or four miles away I guess, and we used to walk or ride a bike to go over there and fish. And if we caught some fish, I guess there was an unwritten agreement that we could phone home and they'll come after us. But if you didn't catch any fish we had to walk home, so there was an incentive to catch fish. [Laughs]

TI: 'Cause if you caught fish, that was the dinner or something that night?

TK: Yeah.

TI: There'd be fresh rock cod or something.

TK: Right, yeah. We used to make sashimi out of it.

TI: [Laughs] So the incentive was you had to catch fish, at least one.

TK: You had to catch fish, yeah.

TI: You kept saying "we," so who would you do this with?

TK: Mostly with my siblings, because there wasn't too many other Japanese families in our area. And I don't know if the Caucasians would've liked to go.

TI: Now when you, so you mentioned you were in the south part of the island.

TK: Right.

TI: And today, when I talk to people in Seattle, I've come across some families, white families who were, whose families were quite wealthy, and they had, they talk about having, like summer homes on Bainbridge Island in the south end, and especially by the water and things like that.

TK: Right.

TI: And they have memories of, they talk about their parents who spent the summer on Bainbridge Island. Were there families like that that you were aware of, that kind of lived in Seattle but then during the summer they would have kind of the summer places on Bainbridge Island?

TK: I think so, yeah.

TI: Now did you ever come across any of them?

TK: No, I don't, no. I don't remember.

TI: Okay. I was just curious. I just remember talking to some people, that they were actually, I think some of them were even part of, their families, like, partly owned the Port Blakeley sort of area, that mill and stuff like that. So I was just curious.

TK: Right.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.