<Begin Segment 10>

MN: Why did your family move to Seattle?

RN: I don't know. All I can think of, I think, and even my older brother, of course he's dead, he died a long time ago, but he thinks that my father's lease on the farm was up. See he used to lease that farm from white people in town, so I think when the lease was up he just pulled up stakes and we, and we took a train into Seattle. That's all I remember.

MN: When you got to Seattle where did you live?

RN: Well, in those days we used to live in what they call, just like here, Little Tokyo, Japantown. A lot of hotels were all owned by Japanese and we stayed at a hotel until we found housing. It wasn't hard in those days. Up in Seattle it's all wooden buildings. There were a lot of homes and it was, it was very easy to rent a house, a wooden house.

MN: What kind of business did your father get into?

RN: He got into tofuya. He bought the one and only tofuya in Seattle, and that was his downfall. He got sick. The weather's bad, he'd make tofu four o'clock in the morning, all the hot steam and everything, he got pneumonia. After about four years he finally got sick, he got pneumonia and he died.

MN: Tell me what your father's schedule was like. You said four o'clock in the morning he started?

RN: Three-thirty, four o'clock. He used to make the tofu, and then by eight o'clock he had it cut up and he'd put 'em in these, in those days they used to have these tin cans or bucket like things. They were five, about five gallon ones with water, put the cut tofu in them and sell it loose. Not like here now. Those days it used to come in big batches and he'll cut 'em up and put 'em in this water, this tin can, like the five gallon cans. You've seen 'em. They don't say, you don't have 'em now, but those days it was all five gallon cans, and he puts, make a handle to it. He'd go up and down Japantown sellin' tofu to these Mama, Mama and Papa stores and meshiyas. See, those beans, those soybeans, you have to soak 'em overnight. They almost doubled in size, so in the morning they all, he'd put 'em in this primitive Japanese grinder. It was, all the machinery was very primitive.

MN: Did he sell the tofu to the ships docked in Seattle?

RN: Huh?

MN: Did he sell the tofu to the ships?

RN: About once a week I'd go with him and we'd go down -- see, in Seattle they had a special dock, and it's a waterfront, Seattle's a, all waterfront. Well, toward the end of the main part the Japanese had their own pier, three of them had their own pier. There was three Japanese shipping companies. They had their own pier, and my father used to go down there about every other week or maybe once or twice a week or something. I would go with him and I would help him carry those big tofu, full of tofu, go up the gangplank and take it to the tofu, I mean on the ship's galley. He used to sell tofu to them all the time. That was when the Japanese were coming and going from Japan all the time. I still remember the, I used to go with my father. To me it was nothing, I'd help carrying 'em up the gangplank and here all these Japanese were coming from Japan, some were gonna go back to Japan. They're always crying, all emotional. You know, you'd be surprised how emotional Japanese can get. They're always crying 'cause, goodbye, they're wavin' their handkerchief and those days they were the only ones that used to throw confetti. Confetti, all the time they were throwing back and forth. But to me, to me it was nothing, same old thing. [Laughs] But thought the Japanese had a lot of, they had, they were building new ships. They weren't the real big ones you see now.

MN: What kind of job did your mother have?

RN: She and her friends, neighborhood friends, they were working to get a job at this, it's a gunnysack factory. You know what a gunnysack is, remember the old time gunnysack, how dusty and filthy? Well these, she had a job there, the Japanese women had a job there patching up those gunnysacks. I think it was owned by, not the Jewish people, but this man, Japanese man, would come by my house, our house, pick up my mother and about four other Japanese women and they'd all work at this gunny house, gunnysack place, patching up those gunnysacks. She was making, going away I think it was about ten dollars a week. But they don't have those gunnysacks no more. It's all plastic and all that.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.