<Begin Segment 7>

TI: There's another note I have to ask you, did you guys ever go mushroom picking, matsutake?

TK: Yeah, there were some, in a certain part of the island I guess there was some matsutake, and we used to go, we used to try to go and find it in the fall.

TI: So on the island?

TK: On the island, yeah.

TI: So what, was it kind of more south or north, or what part of the island? I'm curious.

TK: It was walking distance, so it couldn't have been too far away from where we lived, because the island at that time was, if it wasn't for the strawberry farms or the residents, the rest of it was all in trees, forest. Because I think at one time Bainbridge Island had a big sawmill, and so I think that there were, a lot of the trees at that time -- I mean when I was there it was, I think it was the second growth, but there was quite a few pine trees and things like that.

TI: Yeah, 'cause I, growing up as a kid, we'd always go mushroom picking, but we'd always, it seemed like we would not do Bainbridge Island. We would do either the Cascades or Mount Rainier, sometimes Port Townsend.

TK: Yeah, up in Olympic Peninsula, because I remember -- this was after the war -- when we were living in California they told us the mushroom picking was good up there, so I think me and my brother, we went up there and they took us up to the Olympic Peninsula, up toward Port Townsend, and I remember that we had, they had two cars and I think we filled the trunk full of matsutake. I still don't know what they did with it. [Laughs]

TI: Well I remember, yeah, as a kid, just boxes of...

TK: Boxes.

TI: And the trunk, yeah, would just be filled with them. And the smell of the...

TK: Yeah, it's real good.

TI: And then we would, what our family would do a lot of times is send it to Japan, the really good ones they'd send to Japan and to maybe friends in California. And then the ones that were not as good we would have to keep. [Laughs]

TK: Those are the ones you ate. [Laughs]

TI: So that's the ones we got. You mentioned earlier that when you're on the beach one of the things you use as a clock was when this boat came back from Bremerton.

TK: Right.

TI: From the south part of the island on the beach, could you see the Bremerton shipyard and things like that?

TK: No.

TI: Okay. But did you ever see, like navy ships going by?

TK: Yeah, we'd just see navy ships going by, and there was a real narrow, the passage between Bainbridge and the mainland, where the ships had to pass to go to Bremerton.

TI: And did you guys like to go down there just to look at the ships?

TK: Look at the ships as they went by, yeah?

TI: Now, were there some really big ones? I'm trying to think, did they have, like battleships or destroyers?

TK: I think they did, yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.