Densho Digital Archive - Frank Kitamoto Interview (denshovh-kfrank-01-0025)

<Begin Segment 25>

LH: So as far as your parents, did they just pick up right where they left off?

FK: Yeah, pretty much so. I think my mom started running the farm and my father... borrowed that money to get his jewelry store, from the Friedlander's. I know he started out with a real small jewelry store on, it was Main Street, I'm pretty sure. And then after being there for a while, then he borrowed more money and built this jewelry store on 617 Jackson Street, which was under the Bush Hotel. And so he commuted every day, back and forth, to Seattle. He worked in the jewelry store six days a week and on Sundays he would help out on the farm, and my mother would run the farm. She was a pretty amazing woman in a lot of ways because she...

LH: Can you describe what that means to you?

FK: Oh well, I thought she was very innovative because she would, she would -- she started out with strawberries and was having a hard time getting pickers and decided, "Well, I'll just change to raspberries, because the raspberry season comes after the strawberry season so I should be able to pick up pickers from strawberries who were, who don't want to go back up to Canada and stay around here," so, she started doing raspberries. Then she decided, "Well we've got this creek on our farm, so I can start irrigating," so she got all the permits and stuff to, to dam up this creek and then started irrigating the plants, so she was less at, at mercy of the, of the weather as far as with raspberries. And she said also, we have less problems with rot on the vine because her raspberries were off the ground and stuff. And then after a lot of years of raspberry farming -- you have to rotate your crops about every seven years and stuff -- so then she decided, "Well, it's getting harder and harder to get raspberry pickers, I'll just plant Christmas trees," so she took the raspberries out and planted Christmas trees. And then, so she had Christmas trees for a long time...

LH: Were there any other Christmas trees being planted?

FK: There weren't as, there weren't. I'm sure there were other Christmas trees being planted, but on the Island there weren't very many Christmas trees that were, farms that were that big. And then -- consequently there (were) other people (who) planted Christmas trees and done it that way too -- but then, when she got to where she thought it was getting too hard to do Christmas trees, she said, "Oh, we'll just let it go back to woods and maybe matsutake would come back." [Laughs] So I thought, Oh well... she was a very interesting woman. I know, I know we had a lot of... Canadian Native Americans, who came down to pick and a lot of them have pretty fond memories of her. And I know there were times when... sometimes there would be trouble at the cabins and some of the men would be fighting, and my mother would always tell my father not to go, that she would go. She's, her reasoning was no way they would hit this woman who's so diminutive, 4' 10" and weighs less than 100 pounds. So she would go, 'cause she knew if my father would, they would, somebody would get mad and start a big fight or something. So she would go and take care of it. [Laughs] And I'm going, "Goll... I don't know if I could, I could do that."

LH: She's a brave woman.

FK: Yeah, because she just knew that that's what she had to do. And it was... and she was right. No one ever, ever got mad at her, or tried to hit or anything like that. She just, she just went over there and took care of it. [Laughs]

LH: You know this really sounds like quite something, for a Nisei woman... she's a little bit, one of the older Niseis too.

FK: Yeah, right.

LH: And she'd been trained in Japan.

FK: Right.

LH: So, gee. She handled things very well.

FK: I always wonder how my mother and father only went through 6th grade and how, how come they knew so much more than I did. [Laughs] But, I guess it was, it was just the years, I don't know... but they seemed to be a lot wiser than I was, so...