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MN: And going back to your childhood now, how many children did your parents have?

MU: I had a sister who passed away, I don't remember her, she was maybe two years old. So I had three brothers and one sister, I'm the youngest.

MN: And how old were you when you started to do chores around the ranch?

MU: At what age... it's hard for me to remember exactly what age. The chores I think in many ranches or farms they're sort of handed down according your age and as you graduate into the more harder chores. My chore was to take care of the chickens, feed the chickens. It might have been the first chores, no, feed the cats, we had the cats and dogs. And I would go out and put the cat food, they're usually table scraps, we never bought cat food or dog food we always gave table scraps. If there weren't enough we'd used old bread and put some canned milk, Carnation canned milk on it and that would be what we feed the cats and dogs. And of course if the cats were still hungry they would have to go out after some mice out in the barn where there was hay and so there would be mice there.

MN: And then when did you start having to tend to the ofuro?

MU: I don't remember what age. I do remember having to do that before camp. When the war broke out I was twelve and my birthday's in May and so when we went to camp in July I was thirteen. But coming back to your question, the ofuro I don't remember what age I was, I'm sure it was when my mother must have felt that it was safe for me to strike the match to burn the newspaper which is under the kindling.

MN: And what did you use for kindling?

MU: The branches that were pruned. We had fruit trees so the fruit trees are pruned in the spring and then they're put together, bundled up in wire and then they're stacked in the area near the back ofuro and we would take from there and that would be the kindling. And from there it would be the tree trunks that they had uprooted and some of them were pretty big and so I would have to break them with an axe. So I would do that. I felt pretty secure in my jobs on the ranch like breaking the big stumps with the axe, it was good exercise I'm sure.

MN: It seems really dangerous.

MU: It could have been dangerous but I had no accident that I remember.

MN: So what kind of fruit trees did your family grow?

MU: The stone fruits, plums and peaches and later in the year the pears would come out. And then the quince would come out... a variety of plums.

MN: And were these fruits shipped fresh or did you dry them on your property?

MU: Most of them were sent out fresh to the... we would call them packing house in the town of Newcastle. But that's after it's packed at home, we had a big packing shed where my mother, my sister and we would hire usually ladies to pack according to size into these boxes into baskets, into boxes. And the finished covered box would be taken to the, they call it the packing shed in Newcastle. And the reason they call it packing shed because some of the farmers would take the fruit in the box directly to the packing shed and they would hire packers to pack it there at the packing shed. But in our case and in some of the ranches it's packed at home, saves the labor costs I guess.

MN: So you had a lot of seasonal workers I guess during that time?

MU: Yes, they were hired maybe three or four during the season.

MN: And these seasonal workers were they the local hakujin or were they Filipinos or other Japanese Americans?

MU: There were Japanese, maybe some from Japan and we did have some Niseis who wanted summer work because it is seasonal, the production is in the summer time. Of course when the trees were pruned we did have workers helping us too but I think mostly from Japan.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.