Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Roy Nakagawa Interview
Narrator: Roy Nakagawa
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: July 20, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-nroy-01

[Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

MN: 2011, we are at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles. We will be interviewing Roy Nakagawa; Tani Ikeda is on the video camera, and I will be interviewing, my name is Martha Nakagawa. Roy, I want to start with your father's name.

RN: Japanese name? Okay, I'll give you his full name, everything, so tell me when you want me to start talkin'. Okay, his name is Yoshikichi Tony Nakagawa.

MN: How did he get the name Tony?

RN: I don't know. He just, he just picked it up. I don't know how he got it.

MN: What is your mother's name?

RN: Tama, T-A-M-A.

MN: Do you remember her maiden name? [RN shakes head] What prefecture are they from?

RN: Hiroshima.

MN: Your parents were married in Hiroshima and had one daughter in Japan. Can you share with us what happened to this one daughter?

RN: When my father came to this country and after he called my mother, they left the first daughter with one of their relatives. It's the Japanese style in those days, and so my oldest daughter, sister rather, was left in Japan with the grandparents, I guess. So my mother came over here and we were all born in this country, five children.

MN: Did you ever meet the oldest sister?

RN: No.

MN: Did your father come to the United States first, before your mother?

RN: Yes.

MN: Where did he land?

RN: Seattle.

MN: What did he do there?

RN: I don't know what he did, but I assume that he came, those Japanese men, they all worked on the railroad, building the Great Northern railroad. So he would, they were shipped to Montana when they're building the railroad, and him and his coworkers were all Japanese single men.

MN: Is that why your father decided to live in Montana?

RN: I guess so, 'cause after they quit working on the railroad he had a boarding house full of Japanese men because they had no place to stay, and then he, then he went and went into farming. He leased the farmland from some American people, I guess, so he started the farm.

MN: And this is, the boarding house and the farm is in Montana? Is that correct?

RN: Right.

MN: And is that when he called your mother over?

RN: Yes.

MN: Where in Montana did your parents live?

RN: Place called Missoula, Montana.

MN: Were they in the city of Missoula or right outside?

RN: Right outside.

MN: And you said your parents had five children?

RN: Huh?

MN: Five children in the United States?

RN: I didn't hear that.

MN: Your parents had five children in the United States?

RN: Yes.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

MN: What year were you born?

RN: 1916.

MN: In your sibling hierarchy, where are you? What number child are you?

RN: I'm the fourth.

MN: All the children were born in Montana, Missoula?

RN: Pardon?

MN: All the five children were born in Montana?

RN: No. My youngest sister, she was born in Seattle.

MN: Can you share with us the story of your birth?

RN: I don't, I don't understand. The story of my birth, how could I when I was just born? I was just a baby.

MN: But where did they tell you you were born?

RN: They told me afterward... they didn't tell me, I just got it. Maybe, maybe my brothers told me where I was born, but, well anyway, I was born in Missoula, Montana.

MN: In a hospital or at home?

RN: I was born at home. In fact, they tell me that I was born in the vegetable field. My mother was working in the vegetable field and I was born out in the, out in the field. I don't know how true it is, but...

MN: Your three older brothers and sisters have Japanese names. Do you have a Japanese name?

RN: No.

MN: Why not?

RN: Because they named me first, and I don't know where they got it, but they named me Roy. Now, Roy could be written in Japanese. That's why I didn't need a Japanese name. My Japanese name would be Roy.

MN: What is the first language that you learned? Is it English or Japanese?

RN: What?

MN: What is the first language that you learned, Japanese or English?

RN: [Laughs] I guess Japanese.

MN: And that's how you communicated with your parents, in Japanese?

RN: No. I communicated with my father in English, but I communicated with my mother in Japanese. Because my father, he was very proficient, he became very proficient in English.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

MN: I'm gonna ask you a little bit about your farm. How big was your farm in Missoula?

RN: I would say twenty-five acres.

MN: What did you grow on the farm?

RN: All vegetables. All vegetables.

MN: Is it truck farming vegetables? Like lettuce?

RN: Lettuce, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower, and peppers, I think. I remember cucumbers he had.

MN: How did you plow the fields? Did you have tractors at the time?

RN: No, we had horses and we pulled the horses behind, well, there was a, there was primitive, they called 'em, they used to call 'em harrows, H-A-R-R-O-W, that would break up the soil with the team of horses.

MN: Did your older brothers and sisters have to help on the farm?

RN: Off and on, yes.

MN: Did you also have seasonal workers?

RN: Just one, one or two.

MN: Were they Japanese?

RN: One was Japanese, one was white.

MN: How old were you when you started to help your father during the summer selling vegetables?

RN: I was too young. I was too young. I didn't work in the fields; I was too young.

MN: But you started to ride with your father into town, is that right?

RN: Right.

MN: During the summers.

RN: Uh-huh.

MN: How old were you?

RN: Oh, five or six.

MN: Tell, share with us how you would do this, how the process, after your brothers and sisters picked the vegetables, then what did you and your father do?

RN: What did I do? After the vegetables were processed, washed and everything, next morning he would put 'em on his truck and I would go with him. I'd sit in the front seat with him and we would ride into town, which is only about one or two, not even, not even two miles. It's a small town. And he would go along the streets, house to house, and park the car like they do now and peddle it, and they would stop the car on the street. They would come and pick the vegetables off the truck and he would sell it. One day he would go on one side of this town, next day he'll go to another side. He had three routes, this side, this side, this side.

MN: How much did you sell the vegetables for?

RN: Lettuce, I think, if I remember correctly, was one penny. And I don't know about the other vegetables. They must've been two pennies or maybe three, I don't know, but... so we would finish about noon. Then we would drive back to the farm, which is maybe one or, maybe two miles, mile and a half. It was real close.

MN: How short was the Montana growing season?

RN: What?

MN: How short was the Montana growing season?

RN: Say that over again.

MN: How many months can you grow in Montana?

RN: How many what?

MN: Months. Months.

RN: How many months...

MN: Was the growing season in Montana?

RN: Maybe five months, not even five months. One crop a year, that's it.

MN: When it began to snow what did you do for fun?

RN: [Laughs] Just go outside and play in the snow. That's all we had -- we had a sled, and it's a country road, no paved roads, so my father, he bought us a sled and we all used that one sled. And that's all we did. No toys.

MN: How cold does it get in Montana?

RN: Ten below zero, maybe twenty below zero when the, what they call, they had blizzards those days. You can't go outside for four or five, six days. You can't go outside.

MN: How did your mother keep you, the children, warm during those cold nights?

RN: Well, we all slept one or two beds. We all slept together. We didn't have separate rooms or separate beds. The kids would all sleep together, two or three, and every night we used to have a clay jug, it was an old-fashioned clay jug that they put everything in there, water, whiskey, anything. You would hot, boiling hot water into that thing and put it at the foot of the bed. She would wrap it in a towel or blanket and put it in the bed at the foot of our, where our feet is, and that would keep us warm during the night when you sleep. 'Course we had what they call Japanese futons, so that's what we kept, how we kept warm.

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

<Begin Segment 4>

MN: You also mention that your father had pigs at one time.

RN: He had...

MN: Pigs. Pigs. What happened?

RN: Yeah, he had, he had pigs in the backyard. Well, our farm, he had 'em in the back. He had, if I recall I would say he had about fifteen pigs in all.

MN: What happened to the pigs?

RN: Well, all I know is he got rid of 'em. He sold 'em, so he must've sold 'em to that slaughterhouse which was about three miles from our, from our farm, on a dirt road. He sold 'em and he got rid of 'em, in a way.

MN: Have you ever been to the slaughterhouse?

RN: Oh, yes. When we were kids we used to walk over there. We used to walk over there and we used to sit and see 'em kill, kill the pigs. Not the same pig, but kill animals there.

MN: Did it smell at the slaughterhouse?

RN: Oh yeah. Yes. It's a small slaughterhouse. It wasn't a big, big one.

MN: Now, how often did your family eat meat?

RN: Oh, I don't know. We ate it pretty often, I know. Yeah. We never had chicken, though. Those days nobody ate, nobody had chickens. Well, some of 'em do, did. There was a white dairy farmer on the edge of our, on the edge of our farm, and he would raise, he had milk cows, and he would... chickens, and he would eat chickens all the time. But we never had chicken hardly at all.

MN: What kind of meat did you eat?

RN: It was always beef. My father would pick it up at the market in town before he came home. It's always the same kind of meat. It was always, if I recall, it was usually, always it was short ribs. They would slice it to make Japanese okazu. That's all.

MN: What did you do with the leftovers? Did you put it in an icebox?

RN: I don't, I don't know if we, she just kept it in the pantry with, we never had no icebox or refrigerator.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: Can you tell me how many Japanese families were living in Missoula?

RN: Families, there was three of us, three families. And then in the town of Missoula they had a hospital and there was about two Japanese working at the hospital.

MN: Did you socialize with these people?

RN: What people? The white people?

MN: No, the Japanese people.

RN: Yeah, they used to, our place was sort of like a, it was like a gathering place, wintertime and the fall. There were, some of 'em were bachelors, and the other farmers, they would come over. We lived pretty far apart, though.

MN: Can you tell me about the Doi family?

RN: The Doi? We don't know too much about 'em. Only thing is they raised livestock. They never, they never raised vegetables. They'd raise cattle, not too many, but outside of that I don't know what they raised. All they had, I know they had, they had the cattle on the field. But they never raised vegetables.

MN: Did they have any children?

RN: Well, I really don't know. There was a Doi family, but they had a young fellow, I don't know how old he is, how old he was, and I don't know if... he was a cowboy. He was a Japanese cowboy, and he had his own horse and his clothing was always like a cowboy. Cowboy hat, cowboy boots, he had his own horse. And they raised a few cattle, but outside of that I don't know how they, how they survived. And they had one Japanese woman living with them besides the wife, and they had a couple Japanese men living, so what they did for a living I don't know.

MN: What about the other Japanese family? It was a Issei couple, is that right?

RN: I don't know what the other, what the other families did. I know they didn't raise hardly any vegetables. We never socialized with 'em very much. They only lived about one or two miles away and they lived, they had a farm on the river, so I don't know what they raised or how they made a living. Like I say, we never socialized. My parents, my father used to go over there and I would tag along all the time when I was six, five or six, and he would talk to them for a while, but we never got together. So I don't know what ever, I don't know what happened to 'em.

MN: So these people who were coming to your house, who were they?

RN: They were ex-railroad workers, or they were, some of them were still workin' on the railroad, maintaining the railroad. So they were bachelors, so they used to come over to our place.

MN: You also mentioned you used to have guests that would stay at your house for a few days?

RN: Well, it was more than a few days. Sometimes, sometimes it was, they would stay at our place during the summer and they would help my father on the farm, working, but they would stay two or three months. They were single persons from Japan and they would just, they would just take off. Of course, I don't know about the pay or anything, but they would stay at our farm during the summer, help my father on the farm, then they went in, they went further east. They said they're going to Wyoming. I don't know why, but I think they went to Wyoming to work on the railroad. But they were from Japan. I would say there were, at that time they were all in their early twenties, 'cause I know there were, they had, well, they must've had education in Japan. But anyway, they were in their early twenties, and they were always single.

MN: So it sounds like your parents helped a lot, all the Japanese who came through.

RN: He helped a lot of them.

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

<Begin Segment 6>

MN: What was New Year's like at your house?

RN: What?

MN: What was New Year's like at your house?

RN: New Year's, far as I know it was nothing, we just, they all used to come over on New Year's Day or Eve and we would pound mochi. They would come over, all those bachelors, they would come over to our place, they would pound mochi. And they had, they made everything, they improvised the mochi thing and the pounding, and I guess they got the rice from, they got the rice shipped in from Seattle, I guess. But, well, they used to drink on the Shogatsu, I remember that. [Laughs]

MN: Your parents were not Christians, but they, did they celebrate Christmas?

RN: The kids did, yeah. We had a Christmas tree. We had presents. And they were Buddhist, my father was a Buddhist. In fact, my father on certain days, he would put on a Buddhist, a Buddhist robe and conduct a Buddhist ceremony with a few bachelors that came over. [Laughs] Yeah, he was a Japanese priest. He had a, he had a, he never wore it all the time, only a couple times a year. He would put on the Buddhist robe and everything, conduct Buddhist songs, not songs but, you know.

MN: Do you know what kind of Buddhist ceremony he was doing?

RN: What?

MN: Do you know what kind of Buddhist ceremony your father was conducting?

RN: [Shakes head] You got to figure we were all young yet.

MN: So you said during New Year's a lot of the men came over, there was mochitsuki and drinking. Did your father drink?

RN: He never drank. He kept sake in the house, but he never drank.

MN: Did your parents smoke?

RN: Yeah, my father used to smoke, my mother used to smoke. My mother used to, I don't know why, it was back in Montana so I remember, she used to get or buy someplace Bull Durham. It was a loose tobacco in a little white sack, and you got to roll your own cigarettes. They have a package of cigarette paper, tear it out, she'd roll her own cigarettes and smoke it. And my father used to smoke cigarettes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

MN: I want to ask you about school. Where did your older sister and brother go to school?

RN: My oldest son?

MN: No, sister and brother.

RN: My older sister and brother, they went to school in the town of Missoula. Missoula's a small town, about twelve thousand people, and our farm was about a mile from the city's limits so you could walk into town very easily. So they went to school in town. From our farm they used to walk, walk into Missoula to go to school. Me, as far as I know, just me -- my younger sister wasn't born yet -- every morning we would go up to the road, to the dirt road, and the teacher was from Seattle, I mean, from Missoula, she would come by in her Model T and drive and pick us up, pick me up and drive us to the country school, which was maybe three miles away, maybe two or three miles away. And she was the only teacher at this country school. We only had about altogether maybe ten students. She taught all eight grades, all eight grades in that one country school, from first grade all the way up to eighth grade. Course, there was only one student in eighth grade, maybe two in the fifth grade, but that's the way it was. That was a country school. We had a barn in the back and the kids all used to come to school, practically all of them -- we were the only ones that got a ride from our teacher -- other students, they came to school on horseback, ride the horses and put 'em in the barn which is in the back and keep 'em there 'til they go home. Lunchtime we would take our lunch pails, walk down the lane, and eat lunch.

MN: What did you pack for lunch?

RN: Always peanut butter sandwich, peanut butter. No butter, peanut butter period, two sandwiches. That's all that my mother would pack. There were just me and my older sister, one older sister that lived... my other oldest sister, she went to school in town, walked into town with my brother, but the younger sister, or one above me, she would, she and I were the only ones that went to this country school.

MN: So this was a one room country school?

RN: Huh?

MN: You were all in one room?

RN: One room. One room, one stove, and as far as I remember, naturally, it was all country toilet, you know, one on each side there.

MN: What's a...

RN: One, one room. Eighth grade there'd be one or two desks. It's flexible.

MN: When you say country toilet, are you talking about an outhouse?

RN: Outhouse, yeah.

MN: Were you and your sister the only Japanese American students?

RN: We were the only Orientals.

MN: Did you ever get teased for being Japanese American?

RN: Never. Never brought up. Only thing is when my, when I made friends in town I'd say, make friends with white kids, we were known as the "Japs." "I'll see you at the Japs'." Said we're, they're gonna meet me at my, at our farm and we would go down the river and play or something like that, but we were known as the "Japs."

MN: But they were not saying "Japs" in a bad way, is that right?

RN: No, they, it wasn't meant in a bad way. We weren't considered inferior.

MN: Were there any African Americans in the area?

RN: There was one family, but they didn't live very long. They, they took up and went back to Alabama.

[Interruption]

MN: Can you share with us about the African American family?

RN: Very little. When, all I remember is that they lived on the edge of town and, on my side of town, and I don't remember the, the black family. All I remember is that they had one son, and he used to tag along with us, a white guy and me, but all of a sudden one day they just took up and left. They went back to Alabama and that was the last of it.

MN: Other than that there were no other African Americans?

RN: We were the only outsiders. No Mexicans, just all white and us.

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

<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Now, at home what kind of food did you eat?

RN: Typical Japanese food. Rice, we had rice all the time, and okazu. We never had typical Japanese food like fish cake, kamaboko and that kind of stuff. We never had none of that. All we had was meat and vegetables, and rice and tea. That's it.

MN: Where was your family getting the Japanese food?

RN: Used to have it, I guess they used to have it shipped in from Seattle, 'cause Seattle's only about, at that time I would say three hundred miles away, say, and I guess my father used to have it shipped in, ordered. I don't know how he did it, but anyway, we ate Japanese food. Well, when I say Japanese food, rice, we had, always had rice.

MN: Can you share with us about your ofuro? Who built it?

RN: Well, I still remember my father when he built that ofuro. It was a regular shed, like a, like a garage type shed, small shed. And I still remember him when they were, when they were building it. He built a tub, like a, it was a wooden tub square and on the bottom he had steel or iron plates on the bottom, and you build a fire underneath there, wood, and it will heat that iron, the iron thing, but on top of the iron or iron plate he made a, like a wooden, well, wooden stuff like my fingers, crisscrossed on wood. On top of that steel, you have to do that. That's it. And then we put the water in. I remember him, buckets and buckets of water, we had no hose in those days or what you would call faucets. It was all from the, from the well. You got to throw the bucket down in there and pull it by hand, buckets of water by hand. You'd put it in the tub. We used to have to carry it, I don't know how far it was, maybe from here to there [points], I don't know. But anyway, he put the steel plate first, I don't know what he had, then he would put this wooden crisscross thing on top of the steel there, then he would put the water in and build a fire underneath there, and that was a Japanese bath. You wash outside, you got a little metal base in the water already, and that's what, we took a bath almost every night. Wintertime no, of course, too cold, but during the summer whenever it was possible somebody would always, maybe my mother, always build a fire underneath there. And the tub was, it wasn't a very big tub. Maybe you can get two or three people in there, that's about all. But it was so small you can't stay in there and soak for any length of time. You know Japanese style, put the hot water, you rinse yourself, then you scrub yourself, then you rinse yourself off. In Seattle they had commercial types like that, but on the farm it was just that, built a fire underneath that steel plate type and the wood on top. So we kept clean.

MN: Was your family traditional, did the men go first?

RN: Well yeah, I guess so. I don't remember, but it was always that way. I guess my sister went in afterwards. After all, there's only, what, at that time I had my two older sisters and my mother, see, 'cause my younger sister, she was born in Seattle.

MN: What about your clothes? Did your mother sew your clothes?

RN: No. We bought our clothes, but it's all hand washed. It's all hand washed. You've seen those old-fashioned scrub boards, that's what they washed our clothes on all the time. No such thing as, in those days the washing machines hadn't come in yet.

MN: What about your shoes?

RN: All I know is we, I just had one pair of shoes. Summertime my father, I remember my father, he used to buy me a pair of tennis shoes, but wintertime come I had one pair of leather shoes. They were cheap leather shoes, one pair, that's it. And I remember wintertime come he used to, in those days they used to have boots, rubber boots that come about to about ankle, ankle type.

MN: On Sundays did you family go to church? [RN shakes head] Did the town of Missoula celebrate Fourth of July or other events like that?

RN: Well, I remember Fourth of July, but we never had firecrackers or anything like that. I don't even know if we ever went to a parade in Missoula. It's so small that I don't think they had a parade. But I do remember Fourth of July and the... so that's the way it was, very simple.

MN: How was the Fourth of July celebrated?

RN: I don't know. I don't know if they had firecrackers or not in town.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Did your older brother take you into Missoula to see movies?

RN: I used to tag along with him once in a while, not all the time, but once in a while he, I would tag along with them and we'd pick up a hakujin friend someplace. Yeah, I remember, I don't remember ever going to a movie house. I really don't. I don't remember ever going to a movie house or...

MN: What did you do in Missoula?

RN: Huh?

MN: What did you do in, when your brother brought you into Missoula, when you went into the town of Missoula what did you do?

RN: Nothing. I did, sometimes I used to go because my older brother's friends had younger brothers and I would, and I don't know what we used to do. We didn't do much, anyway. Summertime we used to go down to the river all the time and just play along the river's edge. I remember when, I was about six years old and my American friends, kids would come over to my farm, we'd get together and we'd take the one and only dirt road. We used to walk all the way down toward the schoolhouse way, and there's a slaughterhouse out on the river. See, this side of Missoula they have this, the river coming through the town. It goes, it was a pretty big river. I can't think of the name of the river, but we used to go down to the river, and the slaughterhouse is on, was on the river and when they used to kill the animals, the pigs, mostly pigs -- I think we, I think I saw 'em kill a cow once, only once, but they, I know they used to keep cattle in the back, but anyway, we'd see 'em kill pigs all the time and they used to cut their guts open, take all that stuff like that. They'd pick a few things out and they'd throw the rest of the stuff into the river. [Laughs] Oh, it was primitive. There's no health inspector, you know, no such thing as a health inspector or higher, somebody to look, check in on everybody. Those guys, they do whatever they want. They throw all the guts into the river. God.

MN: Where did they store the meat? Was it in an icebox? Did they have iceboxes there?

RN: No icebox. Well, it's just a cooler. Summertime you have to suffer through. Wintertime you don't need a cooler 'cause you, the weather gets cold right away. So during the hot summer months they, well, from June or July up until middle of September it's pretty hot and they, naturally, they got a, what they call a cooler, maybe a fan in there, call it cooler, but no such thing as modern refrigeration in there. And every now and then we'd be, we'd be outside playing on the side of the road and this truck from the slaughterhouse would come by our house. They used to have these parts of beef, half a cow or something, throw it in the truck with a canvas over it, they're going into the town. But no such thing as refrigeration truck or anything like that.

MN: During the summertime did you have treats like ice cream?

RN: Never had ice cream, soda pop, or nothin' like that. Only time I used to eat ice cream was when I went with my father to sell the vegetables from the truck. The ice cream truck would come by, and that's the only time my father used to buy me ice cream cones, five cents, a big ice cream cone. That's the only time I used to eat ice cream, 'cause otherwise, nobody got iceboxes, no such thing as refrigeration. Yeah, it's very primitive.

MN: Do you have any other memories of Montana?

RN: No, 'cause we, I left there when I was about seven. When I hit Seattle I remember I was eight.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<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.

<Begin Segment 11>

MN: Now your family lived in Seattle's skid row. What was skid row like?

RN: Skid row? Well, the skid row in Seattle is different from the skid row here. They're all bums and, all the kind of junkie people, but up in Seattle skid row, well like for one thing, Seattle is all waterfront, the business section comes right down to the waterfront. You've been to Seattle, right? Skid row was there. Now, all the people that work and live in skid row, they all got money. This was during the Depression days when people had no money, but the only people that had the good money was people in skid row. They, and the Japanese had restaurants, clothing stores, small businesses, and they would sell to these, all these single men, because skid row in those days, on weekends all the lumberjacks, people that work in the forest and the sawmills, they would come into Seattle for the weekend, and these men were all single, all white guys. They'd get paid, those days lumberjacks were making, top pay was twelve dollars a day, and there was all single, practically single. They would come into the skid row to spend their money, drinking. And they used to have a lot of, a lot of women in those days. That place's all full of a lot of prostitution and all that, so there was money down there. And they'll eat at the Japanese hotels, Japanese restaurants, Mama and Papa stores, clothing stores. The Japanese made money off of them. [Laughs] And the Filipinos would be coming into town, they would be coming up from California. They worked the fields right up. By the time they hit Seattle they got money in their pockets, and they always stay at the Japanese rooming houses 'cause they got no place else to stay and all the Filipinos used to stay there. So at the end the Japanese all had their businesses in there. It was quite a place. So when I, when I came down here after I, after my father passed away and I couldn't do, I couldn't go back to school so I'd come down here because my two older sisters had come down earlier, and they had already got married right away and they had a family up here in Boyle, in Boyle Heights. So they told me to come on down.

MN: We're not gonna leave Seattle yet, okay?

RN: Huh?

MN: We're not leaving Seattle yet.

[Interruption]

MN: Skid row, you were talking about gambling and prostitution. Didn't the police come around?

RN: Huh?

MN: On skid row, you were talking about prostitution and gambling.

RN: Seattle in those days, Jackson Street, well, this is unofficial, but Jackson Street was the main street for Japantown. It was the main street for all the minorities, everybody, and anything, what they used to say "below the line," which was Jackson Street, anything goes. Gambling, bootlegging, 'cause all those lumberjacks that worked in the, the seamen that -- the boats are right there, the steamers are there -- seamen, weekends they got no place to go. They all come there, they got all kinds of bootleg whiskey, and so like I say, it was what they call below the line, anything goes, gambling, prostitution, well mainly bootlegging, really. You can go out there and the bootleggers would make whiskey and they'd bring it down there and they'd sell it, but those days was popular. Everybody, they'd get, weather's bad and all that, they all wear overcoats, topcoats or what they call overcoats, top to bottom, and on the sides here they got all those pockets. You know, pockets, and these bootleggers, after they make their, make their whiskey and whatever it is, they used to put 'em in these bottles and stick 'em in the pockets and go down Jackson Street or side streets and sell it. Two-fifty a bottle, two dollars a bottle of whiskey, they got 'em in their pockets. So there was money down there and the police, they know that.

And in Chinatown, there were very few Chinese in Seattle in those days, but it was called Chinatown because the Chinese, before 1925, before the law went into effect, they had bought all those old buildings around there. But they call it Chinatown because the buildings were all owned by Chinese, but they were rented by Japanese businesspeople. So anyways, Chinatown is, everything went in Chinatown. Very few kurombos used to come there. It was all Filipinos. Mainly, ninety-nine percent were all Japanese. It was a wild place, I'm tellin' you. Heck, I used to, I would go, I was only about twelve years old, ten years old, I used to go and play blackjack. They had these, what they call speakeasies. Like I say, anything goes, I'd go to the place where they're selling whiskey and all that, I used to go in the back room, walk in the back room when I was real young, twelve years old. I used to bet ten cents. They'd take my money; they wouldn't kick me out. There was, there's all these big old white guys over there gambling. A few, very few Chinese, most a lot of, some Japanese. I'd go up there, we were only twelve years old. I used to bet ten cents, twenty-five cents sometimes. [Laughs] It was nothing, those days. They would call it vice, but it wasn't vice. It was a lot of fun.

We used to go to these, Japanese used to have these rooming houses and for some reason, they're always built above the earth, there's always a lot of space beneath there, and this is where these white guys, these drunks and all and people down and out, they used to go down there to sleep under there, finish drinking whiskey and throw the bottles away. We used to go down there every so often, go down and pick up these empty whiskey bottles. And those, we used to get, we used to sell 'em to the bootleggers, the people that made it, the hakujin people, we used to get twenty-five cents for empty bottles, and they would fill it up and sell it to the guys that want it. So they'd drink and they'd throw the bottles away, we'd go around there and pick up the bottles and get twenty-five cents for 'em. [Laughs] Yeah, everything was, lot of it was all vice, but the gambling... and all, they had all these, they had these prostitute homes like that, and us kids, we used to sneak behind there and we used to peek. Yeah, in a way it got to a point where in those days we were pretty wild, but we didn't do no bad things, but us kids, we were, what, twelve, thirteen years old, and we'd go around the nighttime, we'd get together and we'd sneak around there and we used to peek. [Laughs] But they used to be, well, they had, they had all, Seattle in those days, it was a seaport town, and a lot of students there, and the lumberjacks, and there was a lot of money down there. You know what, well I don't know how they explained it, but they'd tell us, especially these lumberjacks and the seamen, they used to go up to Alaska and work. In the wintertime they'd come down, in the fall, and they got no work, so they have, all these guys, they used to stay at these Japanese rooming houses, one room hot sleeping, you know? They got a hotplate and they used to stay there until springtime when the jobs opened up in Alaska, so they would eat, cook their own on a hotplate. Those days it's, you can get a housekeeping room for five or six dollars a week.

MN: So it sounds like the Great Depression didn't really affect the area. Did it affect your family?

RN: It didn't affect the Nihonjin because we all had our own ways of making money. Like all the hotels, the cheap hotels, cheap rooming houses, they're all owned by Japanese, see? And the Japanese used to live in 'em and they're kept up real nice 'cause they're all always clean. They always kept 'em up real nice, so all the white people and the Filipinos would live in 'em. Yeah, well anyway, there was a lot of money in Depression days, those guys.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

MN: I want to ask you a little bit about your schooling now. When you moved to Seattle what grammar school did you go to?

RN: Well, in those days on the outskirts of Japantown, or Little Tokyo or what you want to call it, there used to be two grammar schools. One was called Bailey Gatzert; it was right in the heart of the residential area of where the Japanese used to live. It was ninety-nine percent Japanese, students up to the fifth grade. Up to the fifth grade it was all Japanese, maybe one or two Chinese, one kurombo woman. Her name was Eva Whistler and she was the only kurombo living, going to school there. A few Chinese. Rest were all Japanese. Then after we finished the fifth grade we had to go to another one, something like a, similar to a junior high school, which was a little further up downtown, and that was practically all Japanese except for a few white guys. And then from there, you go there for two years, then you go to high schools. There was about four different, three different high schools where most of the Japanese all went to, see.

MN: So the junior high school that you went to, what was that called?

RN: What do you mean?

MN: From Bailey Gatzert you went to what school?

RN: They didn't call 'em junior high schools in those days. I don't know what they used to call 'em, but you go there for two years, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Seventh and eighth grade, then you have to go to the high school. And then Japanese went to about three main high schools. I went to one called Franklin High School, which was in my district. Another was Garfield, which was another little bit better neighborhood, and there was mostly all Jews there, Jewish families. Another one was called Broadway, which was downtown. It was the oldest one in Seattle, and a lot of Japanese, depending on where you lived, went to Broadway. So between the three, and there was a fourth one that was built after I finished my high school, they built another one a little further out which was two-thirds Japanese. But these other three, I wouldn't say they were a hundred percent Japanese, they were almost, a lot of Japanese going there and mostly all white too. But at that time there was only six high schools, you know. There was only about six, well, it became seven because they built a new high school after I finished, but the old ones, there was six of 'em. They're not, they weren't big like the ones here.

MN: How did you do in school?

RN: Huh?

MN: How did you do in school?

RN: Not very, I was just a C grade. Just enough to get by.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

MN: I want to ask you about the sports clubs. What sports club did you belong to?

RN: Boys' club?

MN: Sports.

RN: When?

MN: Sports.

RN: When?

MN: When you were in Seattle.

RN: Well I'll tell you something about Seattle, in those days Seattle, Japanese were very condensed. There were quite a few Japanese compared to down here. But in there up in Seattle in those days they had the Nisei, or mostly Kibeis and Niseis, we had four, we'll say four major sports clubs. I belonged to one called Taiyo. Another one was called, what the hell'd they used to call that? One was called NAC, Nippon Athletic Club, NAC. Another one was called Lotus, which was all Buddhist. They were all made up of Buddhist members, young ones. Then they had another one, two more, one was called We're All Kibeis, the ones that came from Japan. You know, the war was gonna start pretty soon and all the families were calling their kids back from Japan, all the Nisei in, well you know what I mean, people that was, went to... what do you call, what do you call those people?

MN: Kibei.

RN: Kibeis. They had two clubs, the Kibeis. They speak nothing but Japanese. And there're all these different clubs, Wasedas, they all had sports programs. They all had baseball, football, and basketball. All year round we had different teams and we had our own Japanese leagues, different class. It was big in those days, very interesting. And all the Japanese that lived in the farmlands, outskirts of Seattle, like Bellevue, Yakima, Wapato, and there's two or three others, they all had their own athletic clubs and they all used to come into town on weekends to play sports, baseball. Basketball you can't play because they used to come in the weekends because weekends, weekdays they have to work and it's too far away. They're all about thirty miles away. But then they'll, on the outskirts of Seattle now, they don't have it now, but in those days places, the suburbs of Seattle, like they call 'em Kent, Auburn, Snohomish, and a couple others, all Japanese farms around there and they all had their athletic clubs, all Nisei. And they all used to come into Seattle to play sports on weekends. We used to dominate the Seattle athletic fields like you have down here. But up there the Japanese dominated those fields. Sports was big up there in those days.

MN: So did you play only with Japanese Americans or did you also play with the hakujin teams?

RN: In Seattle there was the Taiyos and the Nippons, they had older players. They participated in the Seattle white league, football and baseball, not basketball. They had, but the city of Seattle had their own city league, baseball, and the Japanese, the Nippon and the Taiyos, they're all the good players. They're all in their, well I wouldn't say thirties, but in those days in their early twenties. They would compete with the American teams. But then the Seattle, the younger ones, we had our own league, and we, it was big up there in Seattle.

MN: So when you were in the sports club you had to play all three games, basketball, baseball and football?

RN: If you belonged to, say, like I belonged to the Taiyos, the Taiyos had three levels of players, the real older ones, then the ones that are out of high school -- they were about in their early twenties -- then they had the ones that was in high school yet. They had three levels. They go by age. And they had three levels of play, and the older ones, the good ones, they used to get good players that used to play in the Seattle American league, white league, city league, baseball, mainly baseball. And football they used to play.

MN: Which sports were you strongest in?

RN: Me?

MN: Yeah.

RN: I used to play football, but I was no good in baseball or basketball. Basketball I was too fat, too slow. I used to belong to a team, but I would sit on the bench all the time and toward the end of the game when the score was big they'd put me in for one minute or so like that. The rest of the time I'd sit on the bench, so I finally quit. But baseball was the same way. I used to play baseball. We all, when you belong to a league you play all three sports. Some of the players are good in all three sports and some are only good in basketball, some are good in baseball. But I could play football, see, but baseball I couldn't play. I, they'd hit me the ball and then I'd, and jeez, like the ball'd go over my head, and I'd catch grounders that I couldn't hit. I was a slow swinger. I wasn't, I wasn't a good baseball player, and I was, like I say, I was too fat to play basketball. Although I suited up every game, I would go in there maybe for, at the end, one minute or so like that, so I quit. But I was good in football.

MN: What position did you play in football?

RN: I was a guard. See, I was, don't tell nobody, don't tell nobody, but in high school I was all city. I was all city, all star team in high school. Then I got a scholarship to go to college. I had a football scholarship to go to college. But football was big, and in high school I was, well, all city, all star for two years, but like football, you don't need no skill. You don't need no skill in football. Baseball and basketball you got to be skillful, but football you don't have to be skillful.

MN: You know, let me ask you, if you wanted to quit the Taiyos and go to another team --

RN: You couldn't do it. You would be ostracized. When you, when you join one team you don't quit and go to another club. They won't like it in the first place, and you, your name is mud. Nowadays it's different. Even up to about ten or fifteen years ago here in L.A. you can go from one club to another, they think nothing of it. But up in Seattle, oh boy, you belong to one club you don't go to another club. The Japanese loyalty, I guess, or something.

MN: Do you know how the Taiyos formed?

RN: Huh?

MN: How the Taiyos, that team, how it was organized? Who, how was your team created?

RN: Well, it's hard to say. Team like the Taiyos, they were created a long time ago. They'd just get together somehow and they had lots of teams. They all belonged to some team, and when the baseball season'd come we had all levels of hardball, and the funny thing, when, right before the, before the war started all the Kibeis were coming back to Seattle and they formed their own club and they formed their own baseball. They had about two teams from out in Japan. They, and they played with, I guess, the Nisei, but when they play against the Nisei they all speak Japanese. It's a funny thing, you hear one group speak nothing but English, speaking English, the Nisei people, but the ones from, Kibeis from Japan, they all speak in Japanese. And it was funny.

MN: Did you do any Japanese sports, like kendo or judo?

RN: Not me. I tried judo, but I quit. For a while, I'll tell you why quit. Some of my friends were in judo and they were pretty good at it, and they told me, 'cause I was gettin' big, pretty big, and so they asked me to come with them and join them 'em and learn judo, so I went with 'em one time. And Japanese are, they're funny. Well, they're not funny, but... so when they teach you, this guy, he's a Kibei, he's like a bully type. All those guys in kendo and judo, they're all bullies. So this guy, I knew who he was and I never did like him because he was, he was a bully, and he was like, was a Kibei. He went to Japan, got Japanese education and came back to this country, and he taught judo. Well anyway, I got there, he don't say nothin' to me and I didn't like his looks, but he grabbed me, boom, he kicked me, tripped me and threw me to the ground. I get up and, picked me up and hit me again. God damn, I got so mad, and he's supposed to be teaching me how to do it. Naturally, I can't speak Japanese and he's not, and he don't speak, he's not speaking at all. But he picks me up and grabs me and boom, I'm down. He's, he's teaching me, but to me he's not teaching me. And I was mad, so I went about two or three times, I quit. And to this day I, he's still livin' around here. He's an old guy, but I know who he is and to this day I say, that son of a so-and-so, I says. And he was the one that picked, used to pick me up back in 1935, around there. That's why I quit judo.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

MN: Let me ask you about church. When you moved to Seattle did your family go to church?

RN: Not exactly. My mother, she used to go to Buddhist church, but then my brother, he, all of a sudden he got interested in the Christian Church and he was very active in the Presbyterian church in Seattle. He's my older brother, five years older than me. And my mother went to Buddhist church and my youngest sister went to Buddhist church. My mother used to say, go to, go to any church you want to. You don't have to go to Buddhist church. You go to any church you want to 'cause church is good for you. She was very broadminded in that way. And my brother, all of a sudden he became a real diehard Christian. He became a leader, all that, and he would make me go to Christian church, Presbyterian. Here I'm all dressed in my baseball outfit, ready to be picked up to go play a game on Sunday, he says, "You're gonna come to church." And we began to fight, and my mother says, go to church. She said, quit fighting. Oh, my brother and me, we used to, we never did get along. Well anyway, I ended up going to church. I told my kids outside waiting for me in the car, I says, I go and I says... but to this day we used to fight. Then all of a sudden, boom, he got interested with some friends in the market, vegetable market, like that. He got disinterested in church. And here he was making me, forcing me to go to church and all that, and all of a sudden he, he quits and he gets, got nothin' to do with the church.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

MN: I want to ask you about your father's love of matsutake hunting.

RN: Well, he would, just like any, all the Issei men, they got interested. Once you get interested and you go all out. You're either interested in it or you're not interested in it, see? If you're interested in it, boy, you go every Sunday, rain or shine you go out there. And then later on, as the Nisei got older, playing sports, they're gettin' too old to play sports, say in their thirties or even early, late twenties, twenty-five, like that, they're too old for sports, football, basketball, like that, they went into picking mushrooms.

MN: Did you go with your father?

RN: Once or twice, that's all. 'Cause I liked the outdoors, but I went with my father once or twice and, well, there's nothin' to it, actually. But that's a big thing up there in the -- but after the war, maybe during the war, after the Japanese left Seattle area, then the Asians began to take it up and they wrecked everything. You know, Chinese and the Vietnamese, they come over there, they start taking, and they wrecked everything. So the Japanese got disgusted and I guess some of 'em still go, but it's getting too difficult now 'cause you got to go too far away. Well anyway, it's too many people. But in those days it was just the Japanese that went out into the woods to pick mushrooms. Nobody else would. Chinese wouldn't go. Japanese were the only ones. Then of course the older Nisei began to get into it a little bit.

MN: So tell me what you do when you go up there, what do you do to find the matsutake?

RN: Well, you don't do nothin'. You park your car, you don't have to go far, in those days you didn't have to go far from Seattle. You go fifteen, twenty minutes you're out in the woods up in the Cascades. You're already up in the woods there. So all you do is get yourself a walking stick and you look around to see, you get your bearings. There's no sign or anything where you're at or anything. You park your car anywhere along the road, you get out, three or four people, they look around, get their bearings, one guy goes this way and you separate. And you go through the woods and it's, up there it's soft wood, soft, and you can walk and you just, all you do is get the stick and the, like the Japanese say, you tsutsuku, they would just poke around, move the leaves and everything around. And you're always lookin' down. You don't know where you're going, but you don't go far. You're just walkin' very slowly with a stick, poke around, oh, here it is. And you poke your stick and you see a little mushroom come up. Now there's all kinds of mushrooms up there. There's a lot of poisonous ones up there, but the Japanese, they know a matsutake when they see one, instinct. They know which is good and which is bad. So you go tsutsuku and you pick up, and it was a known fact when you pick it you don't pick up the whole root. You just break it off and you leave the stem, the root or the stem. It's not very deep. You break it off there and you leave that root or stem in there for next year. If you dig it up you won't get no more. And if it's a good one, if it's a good, if it's a good bed you remember, somehow you remember it. And you don't tell nobody, not even your best friend, where that one bed is. That's how serious they take it, 'cause boy, if you find a good bed then, oh man, you found it. 'Cause when it rains at a certain time in the first of September, after the first rain it comes up real good and, oh, that, when they, you hear 'em talk about it. But if it don't rain at a certain time no mushrooms'll come out. You're lucky to get one or two. But if the rains come at a certain time in September, right after Labor Day, up there it comes out real good and you get a sack full. And you, you give it to everybody. And now you never now... that mushroom, they eat it, though. You make okazu with it, you put it in the rice, matsutake rice. You can't beat it. [Laughs] Then you give a lot of it away to your best friends and if you got a lot of it you could kind of dry it a little bit. But it tastes so good, that matsutake.

MN: What about warabi? Did you go warabi hunting?

RN: Yeah, warabi, it's not like mushroom, but you still find it in the same places. Warabis, you pick 'em at the base of the trees, and then they're good, but, and you can find 'em a longer time. It's not like matsutake where it's only for just a very short season. Warabi, yeah, they grow all year round just about. And they're good.

MN: What about fishing? Did your father fish?

RN: My father, no, he never did do it. Well, he didn't have the time to go fishing, but he never was much of a fisherman. But up there, oh man, Seattle, they all go salmon fishing. Not so much trout because you got to go too far away on trout, but up there salmon fishing was right in the bay. It was something, that, that salmon fishing. The Japanese were the only ones that go salmon fishing. Nobody else goes. In those days even the white people never went, never went fishing. It was all Japanese. I don't know if I told you, but in those days, back in the early '30s or before that, all the Japanese, they would go out in Elliott Bay, which is Seattle. You've been to Seattle? On the, they're all out there in their rowboats, and when the sun comes up way up there and on the bay it's all rowboats out there. All over is all boats, all rowboats, and when they come up to shore and look around all the, they're all Japanese out there. You won't find no white guy or Chinaman or anything. They're all Japanese in those boats, all salmon fishing. [Laughs] It's a funny thing. My brother, he went a couple times and he took me with him. But in those days nobody had electric, electric motors. It was all hands. But you don't go far, you don't go fast, just keep the boat steady. And my brother, he'd make me oar, keep the boat steady and he would just sit down and watch the line, but I had to do all the, keeping the boat steady. So him and I used to go together, but... and they'd catch 'em. Then if we had a, Jackson Street was the main street that goes right down to the ocean, and daylight comes they'd begin to come in gradually, eight o'clock they all check in their boats and walk up the street with fish hangin' on their, they're all carryin' their fish in their hands up, walkin' up to their homes because they all live real close. Yeah, it was something.

MN: How did your mother prepare the fish?

RN: Usually she used to fry it, or she used to make a sauce with shoyu sometimes. And sometimes she'd salt it down. But those days nobody ate fish except Japanese. We used to get all kinds of, all kinds of fish.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Now how old were you when you started to work in the sawmills?

RN: I was about -- I didn't work in the sawmills too long, not even a full year -- about eighteen. 'Cause like I say, one time I was working in a sawmill and I had to come back into town to go back to my school in June for my, for my diploma. I got, I had a certificate which I gave, they gave me in February, certificate saying that I got enough credits to graduate, but I had to come back in June to get a diploma. Now there's no difference between a diploma and certificate, but I was at the sawmill and I had to come back in June to get my diploma. But I told my Japanese foreman, he said, "No, if you quit today and go back to get diploma you won't have a job when you come back." So I said, well, in that case I'll stay here and work then. So I got a certificate, but I never got a diploma because that guy said, "If you leave your job today for two or three days you won't have a job when you come back." So those days if you work in the sawmill, and I worked in the sawmill -- I worked in a logging camp above that before, but I worked in the sawmill a very short time. About three months, that's all I worked. I quit anyway to go back to school.

MN: So you don't have your high school diploma. You just have a certificate.

RN: That's all.

MN: Now, you also went to Alaska to work in the canneries.

RN: Yeah.

MN: When did you go?

RN: Huh?

MN: When did you go, after school or --

RN: Where?

MN: When, were you still going to school at the time?

RN: Senior year I did, but most of the time, well, I wasn't, when I was in high school, because the school kids, when you're in school, high school age, you work in the canneries, the timing is just right. You can work in the canneries at that time in time to go after, after summer school, or you know what I mean. We'd quit and you can come back in September in time to go back to school. Now, when you go work in the salmon canneries those canneries are located all along -- if you got a map I'll show you -- all the way from the Gulf of Alaska all the way down to the Canadian border, so you don't know where you're gonna go work. And see, the salmon fishing up there begins up in Nome, way back in April it starts. Then it gets, work for the south, you work, come work down close to the Canadian border with the pink salmon. But a lot of people think it just, it's just... it's very complicated. It's not complicated; it's the laws. The fishing season, canning season, it only lasts about five weeks, that's all. And you work in the salmon canneries at the most two or three months, that's all, just there in the school vacation time. That's why it's ideal to work in the canneries in the summertime and come back there and go back to school. That's why it was ideal for a lot of guys going to the University of Washington, 'cause school lets off, say, in June and, depending on where you go to work in the canneries, you go and you work the canneries five or six months in a, five or six weeks during the summer, you come back maybe middle of August or end of September just in time to go back to college. When you come back you get paid. You got four or five hundred or six hundred in your hand. That's why a lot of those Japanese students, they'd go to canneries and they'd pay, it paid for their college education. Yeah, boy, you got four or five hundred bucks in your hand, cash. That takes you quite a time in those days, during the Depression days. And you'd get paid, go in the back, they pay you one time. Oh man, I got, most I ever got was about five hundred dollars 'cause I used to go a very short time, but they give you in cash.

MN: So you did this senior, senior year in, while you were in Franklin High School. And then you mentioned that you made all city.

RN: Huh?

MN: You said you made all city in high school?

RN: Yeah, high school I made, playing football I made, I made all city two years in a row.

MN: Were your brother and father athletic also?

RN: No. My brother played a little bit, but not much.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

MN: What year did you graduate from high school?

RN: '35. 1935.

MN: Were you planning to go to college?

RN: I didn't, I wasn't planning to go to college. That's why I had a difficult time, because when you plan to go to college, even now or even in those days, even in those days you had to have so many high school credits to go to college. Well, I'm a very poor student and I barely finished high school. I just took algebra one or geometry one, just one, primary. When you go to college you got to have algebra two or three, or geometry or something three or four, so I had to go back to high school, couple classes so I can get my college entrance. Not only me but a lot of other football players that had scholarships from back East, they didn't have, they were like me. They had to go back to some high school to get their high school credits.

MN: How many scholarships were you offered?

RN: Well, I don't want you to write down all that 'cause it... I was offered, well, four, but it was two major colleges and from two minor, smaller colleges, something similar to here. But up Seattle they had these minor colleges. One was, like they say, called College of Puget Sound, and another one. Then I had one from Washington State and one from University of Washington. There was another Japanese with me; he went to another high school in Seattle and we were good friends. Him and I both got the scholarships and then, but after about, after the second year, actually third year, the second year, anyway, they cut it off.

MN: Which university scholarship did you accept?

RN: I went to University of Washington because they offered me a scholarship but only for my, they didn't offer me a place to stay and live on account of, like the, from out of town because, well, you live in town, you live in Seattle and University of Washington's in Seattle so you can stay home, but your scholarship will pay for your tuition, your books, your travel and all that. That's why. But that only lasted for two years, see, two and a half years or something like that. Then they, I wasn't good enough so they cut me off. It's not like now, you get a scholarship you're guaranteed four years whether you make the team or not. If you make the squad you still get it, but up there, heck no. If you can't cut it, the first, on the first team or something like that, they cut you off, and when they cut you off they don't give you a penny to go home. All those, those days lot of those white players that come, a lot of them came from Texas and back East, and they got cut off. If you can't make the first team or the top squad team they cut you off and they don't give you nothin'. Lot of those guys in those days, they all hitchhiked home. I remember two of my friends I made, they were from Texas, they hitchhiked home. Said, "We ain't got no money to go home." They hitchhiked. In those days hitchhiking was legal and everybody used to hitchhike. Even I used to hitchhike a lot of places. But now it's illegal. But it was pretty rough in those days.

MN: How did your parents feel about you getting a football scholarship?

RN: What?

MN: How did your parents feel about you getting a football scholarship?

RN: They don't know nothing about that, and I just tell 'em I'm goin' to university.

MN: I want you to brag a little. You, you did mention the fourth college that you got a letter from. What's that fourth university?

RN: Well, University of Washington, Washington State, which is a state college which is two hundred miles away, then two smaller, one was College of Puget Sound, which is a small two-year, two- or three-year college, I don't know. The other one I forgot what the name was. It was, it was around Tacoma somewhere, suburb of Seattle.

MN: Didn't you get a letter from Notre Dame?

RN: I never got a, I never got a letter. It was something else I got. I forgot what it was. I forgot what it was I got.

MN: So you said there was one more Japanese American on the University of Washington football team, other --

RN: What?

MN: You said there was one more Japanese American.

RN: Yeah, yeah. He went to a different high school in Seattle. He was good. Yeah, he was, well, he was an all star in Seattle, just like me, and he was, he was bigger than me. But anyway, we, he was a star in his high school. But his family's all gone. Too bad, 'cause he had a bad heart.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

MN: Now, you had mentioned earlier that were not prepared academically to go to college and you had to go to high school, and your other football teammates also had to go to high school.

RN: My other friend?

MN: Your other teammates, your football teammates. You were not the only one that went to high school, right?

RN: There were two other white guys from back East that had to go back to high school, just the two of them. But they made 'em up, their credit, in, on the university somehow. They got by somehow. But my case, I had to go back to high school during the, when I was there, and attend two classes.

MN: Now, while you were on the team, did you suffer any injuries? [RN shakes head] Then you got cut after two years?

RN: Two or three years.

MN: Why did, why did they cut you off?

RN: 'Cause I, well, because for one thing, I wasn't able to make the first team. I was on the squad, but they got new players coming in all the time so they know that I would never make the first team. I would be a benchwarmer, so they cut you off. That's all there is to it. The other Japanese guy, Harry, he got cut off the same time I did, and others, other white guys, same, they came when I entered and they got cut off. I don't know how many there were. You don't know how many 'cause you just talk to the ones that you hear about. There's a, there was a number of them, maybe three or four in those days, so it's, it was very simple, anyway.

MN: So when you got cut off what did you do, once you got cut off?

RN: When I got cut off I went to work, like I told, I went to work in a sawmill and then I worked, I went up to the salmon cannery to work for the summer. And when I come back I got that cash in my hand, two hundred and, three hundred and fifty or something like that, money I saved. In those days I didn't give my, I didn't give my folks no money for living there. When I came back to Seattle, I mean from Alaska, I gave 'em a lump sum. Naturally I have to give 'em something. But they told me, "Keep your money and buy your own clothes and everything, your own expenses," see. So anyway, I went, what happened was after University of Washington cut me off and I went to work to raise money, I wrote a letter to the coach at Washington University, Washington State college, and he answered me. He said okay, you can come to school here and you can turn out for the football team. If you can make the squad, the team, the squad, if you can cut it we'll give you a scholarship. So I took the chance; in the fall I went back to Washington State and he gave me a uniform and I went to practice there, and at the, at the end of spring practice in February he gave me, they gave me a scholarship. I made the squad. So in the fall, he said, "Now in the fall you come back you'll be on the squad and we'll pay your tuition and everything." But by that time, after the spring practice, that's when my father passed away, see. So I quit school and went back to Seattle. And then from Seattle I came down here, 'cause my father's gone and my brother, he had a business but he sold the business, and so my mother and my younger sister stayed in Seattle until she finished high school. Then by that time I had come down to here to work 'cause my sister told my, my married sisters told me, "Come on down here and you can get a job at the market." But anyway, that's why I didn't go back to school, even though I had a scholarship waiting for me I didn't go back.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

MN: -- down to Los Angeles, why did you come to Los Angeles?

RN: Because after my father died I couldn't go back to school, so I needed a job. Somebody's got to support my mother and my daughter, I mean my sister. My older brother, he was in between jobs. He had a, he had a fruit and vegetable stand, him and a partner, but they sold out or something. So anyway, I couldn't go back to school because my father died. My sisters, I had two married sisters down here, they told me to come on down out here because they can get you a job right away in the market, the wholesale market. So I came down here, and I lived with my sister for a while and I got the job down at the wholesale market, which is a pretty hard job to get. And I worked there until the war broke out. After I got settled and my younger sister finished, finished school, then she and my mother came down here. We rented a house in Boyle Heights and we lived there until the war broke out.

MN: Which market did you work at, the Seventh or Ninth?

RN: Huh?

MN: Which market did you work at, Seventh or Ninth?

RN: Ninth Street Market, wholesale market.

MN: What did you do there?

RN: I was what they call a swamper, just a, guys that unload trucks and load trucks and wholesale work, all muscle. I got a job right away 'cause I had a few good connections, and besides that I was big like this. And it was this, this company started to wholesale potato house and those days potatoes were all hundred pound sacks, so they, that's why I got the job. I had a few good connections.

MN: There was another swamper named Shigekawa.

RN: Yeah.

MN: Tell us about him. You became good friends with him.

RN: Well, when I, way it started out I got a job there and when I was, when I started to work there, there was another young guy, young, skinny Japanese guy. He was skinny, young, and we worked pretty hard. I said this guy, little skinny guy like that and he's lifting them heavy sacks, you know? And he had one of those UCLA green caps on. And we worked together pretty good, so that happened, worked for about two years and I didn't who he was, but he was a very nice fellow. And he used to tell me he belonged to a basketball team. Well anyway, finally, after about a year and a half, I guess, or two years I found out that his father had, was one of the founders of this wholesale potato market and this skinny young kid was his only son. You heard of Dr. Shigekawa; this is the, their only son, see. Same age as me, so he quit college same time I quit school. We were workin' together, but I didn't know at that time that he was the boss's son. So anyway, we kept working for a couple years like that, and one day he was working in the office. They told him, from what I hear, another gal or something, the bookkeeper or somebody told me, said, "We told him to, don't do this heavy work. Since you're one of the stockholders there, you become a salesman and work there." So he finally put on his salesman outfit on and he signed my first paycheck. He's in the office there signing paychecks. I didn't know that. So he signed my first paycheck and then the war broke out. But all this time I didn't know who he was, and I know his, I knew his father had, they're pretty wealthy 'cause he had interests in the other businesses. So he's still living.

MN: And before you knew who he was, didn't you go driving together?

RN: What?

MN: Didn't, didn't he take you out to drive in his car and introduce you to his friends?

RN: After work sometimes he would take me to his house. They had a Mama and Papa store down Hooper Street and Central Avenue, in "kurombo town." Well, that's where they made their money. I used to go there with him. I had no car, but he had that roadster, open faced, good car, so he used to take me home with him. I'd clean up, then he'd take me for a ride. We'd go down to the beach or he'd take me to Normandie Avenue where his friends used to hang out. He was a member of the Cardinal basketball team and he would introduce me to a lot of his friends there. 'Til the war broke out and, like I say, he signed my first check when the war broke out.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

MN: Tell me about your other friend, Taniguchi.

RN: I had, I made friends with a couple of people that used to live here, and I got to know 'em real good. They used to take me around, everywhere. I had no car in those days, and so they used to pick me up and we used to go here and there. We used to go, we used to go everywhere. They used to take me to the beach, racetracks sometimes, everywhere.

MN: Didn't you and Taniguchi go down to Oceanside?

RN: Did I go down to Oceanside? Yeah, I went. You see, my Saturdays and Sundays are open, and my mother was already settled in her house and I had nothing to do, and I used to like to bum around, see different places. And sometimes I know all the, I don't know how it got about to it, but I got to know some of the truck drivers down, down at the wholesale market, and I used to say, hey, how about taking, how about me taggin' along? 'Cause on the, it used to be on a schedule, about like a Saturday or a Friday, something, they had to go out to these different farms all over to pick up produce and bring it to the market, and he'd say, yeah, come on with me, and I would ride with him. And we'd go all over, down toward Oceanside and San Onofre. That was the closest one. We used to go up in the hills there where they used to raise tomatoes and celery, those Japanese farmers, and naturally I had to help him load the truck. So I used to go with him, help load the truck, we'd come back downtown and we'd stop at, always we would stop, going and coming, at Knott's Berry Farm. At that time it was, they didn't have, Knott's Berry Farm didn't have the, what they have now. All they had was a, was a family restaurant, chicken dinners. We'd stop there and have a chicken dinner, coming back we would have a chicken dinner, and then we'd drop the stuff off at the market. And he was one of 'em. I had a couple other friends I would hang, go with, and I would ride with them.

MN: Did you get a ride to Terminal Island?

RN: I used to go there a number of times. That's another story all by itself. Yeah, I always wanted to become a tuna fisherman because when I was in Seattle working in the salmon canneries, I had a friend and he was from Terminal Island, and he was going to school at the Washington State University when I was there for a short time. He came there and I got to know him, and he's, he lived at the boarding house and I was batching, or living out on a farmhouse, below the school there's little small farms. I stayed with a hakujin family, room and board. And he used to tell me about Terminal Island and he'd begin to tell me how, I used to tell him, yeah, I'd like to go down to California and work in those tuna boats 'cause my, couple of my friends had connections, and they work in the tuna boats and they come back with a pile of money. He said, no, he says, "You don't want to work in the tuna boats, Roy." Says, "That's not for you." He says it's rough. You make big money sometime if you're lucky, but he says Japanese down there that work on the tuna boats, they're very clannish, from Japan. They're, and they, like he used to tell me, they talk about it and you're a beginner and they're gonna cut you up and down 'cause you don't know how to be a fisherman, you're not a member of the clan. You know, Japanese are very close, the Japanese fishermen especially. They're very, very close, and you'll be the outsider and they're gonna cut you up and down. "Yeah, but," I say, "you make good money." He said, "Yeah, you make good money sometimes." Well anyway, he was tellin' me all about it, but I was determined, so I said I'm gonna get a boat down there. So I used to go down to Terminal Island after work, after the wholesale market closed a lot of time -- it closed at eleven o'clock -- I'd go home, I'd go with my friends, they used to live right close by. I used to clean up and I used to take a streetcar down to the red car. Remember the red cars? They'd go directly to San Pedro. I'd go to San Pedro, take that little ferry across the thing and go to Terminal Island, and I used to hang around the pool hall there, walk along the pier there, getting acquainted with those guys there, trying to, trying to get on the fishing boats, see. But then they, then I got to know some of the guys, but I got to know some guys and it's too hard, he says. You got to have pull, all your Japanese Issei connections. Yeah, I used to hang around there. Then I used to come home and come home about six o'clock, go to bed for two hours. [Laughs]

MN: And when did your day start at the wholesale market?

RN: What?

MN: What time did you have to be at the wholesale market?

RN: At that time the market, summertime it was open three o'clock, three o'clock in the morning. They'd blow the whistle then you, everybody opened the doors. Then I'd work until eleven o'clock.

MN: Well, you never made on a fishing boat, but you went up to Stockton.

RN: Huh?

MN: But you went up to Stockton and Salinas quite a lot.

RN: Well, I went up to Stockton, I used to catch a ride with a lot of these truck drivers. Down at the market when I was working at the wholesale market I used to, somehow I used to talk to some of them drivers and they, they're pretty sociable guys and, "Yeah, come along with me," he says. "Come with me." And I'd just ride with 'em 'cause they, they liked to have company, see, but sometimes I'd fall asleep. They'd wake me up, say, "Hey, don't go to sleep," he says. Says, "You got to, if you fall asleep I get sleepy," so the drivers used to tell me don't fall asleep. [Laughs] That's all okay. Okay, I says. So I kept awake. But they were nice guys.

MN: So you didn't have a car, but you got around California quite a lot.

RN: Well, I took the streetcar those days. It wasn't difficult because I didn't go nowhere. You know, those days it was called the P-car that went down, goes up First Street all the way up to Brooklyn Avenue, back into town. Pico, down to Pico was the end of the line. So anyway, that P-car used to come right down to Little Tokyo all the time, take me to Boyle Heights where I lived, used to live.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

MN: I want to get into the war years, okay?

RN: What?

MN: I want to get into the war.

RN: Into the war?

MN: The war years. What were you doing on December 7, 1941?

RN: We were laying on the lawn at Boyle Heights when the war broke out. We heard it on the radio.

MN: What was your reaction when you heard the news?

RN: No reaction. At that time my mother had just come down from Seattle and we were living, we were renting a house in Boyle Heights. My mother was there and my two married sisters. Those days nobody moved too far away. We all lived close together, so then we got together and said okay, we'll stick together. So we all went together and my two married sisters, my brother, my mother, my sisters, we all stuck together and we went to Poston together.

MN: So after, the day after Pearl Harbor what happened to your job at the wholesale market?

RN: There was no job. That wholesale market was closed tight. Every door was locked. Only one open was an orange distributor, a hakujin fruit distributor, but every other house was locked solid.

MN: Did you know anyone who got picked up by the FBI? [RN shakes head] When did you hear that you have to go to camp?

RN: I don't know where I heard it from, but it, word just gets around. And I don't know how the Japanese communicated those days, but even after, when the war started we stayed home, but then, what the hell, I says, I went by myself, took the P-car downtown to First Street here and walked around. There was no trouble. And I attended some of the meetings, those older Nisei, they had meetings down there and I attended some of those meetings. It was open to anybody.

MN: What were they talking about at the meetings?

RN: I don't know, nothing special. About where you're gonna go or where you're gonna stay or, there was talk about who wants to volunteer, I think one of them was to volunteer with the American officials, what's gonna happen. But it was nothing special.

MN: What did Little Tokyo look like when you took the P-car?

RN: Oh, it was empty. It was nothing. The kurombos hadn't moved in. It was just plain empty. All the stores were closed. Only thing comin' through was the streetcar. Really. Yeah, I didn't go downtown; I just walked around First Street. When I got tired I'd take the P-car, the red car, the streetcar or P-car up back to Boyle Heights, but there was no trouble.

MN: You mentioned a lot of the Boyle Heights people were moving so that they could go into Manzanar?

RN: Yeah, there was a lot of Japanese living up at that time and I don't know how they communicated, but a lot of them were moving, were moving downtown here. I don't know where they were gonna move to downtown here, 'cause they heard that they were going to Manzanar and, well, it was Santa Anita first. It wasn't Manzanar, it was Santa Anita. They said a lot of Japanese were being, living in Santa Anita temporarily, so then they moved there because, I don't know, for some reason they wanted to make sure that they would go where the other Japanese were going, see? But we stayed put in our house because we were gonna stick together, but we didn't know where we were gonna end up at.

MN: So your family didn't have to report to a gathering place?

RN: What?

MN: Your family didn't have to go to gathering place?

RN: We stayed in our same house. We never, we were never assembled nowhere. We just stayed there. There was my family and a few of my Seattle friends were staying, came to stay with us. When the war broke out they didn't go back to Seattle. They came and they stayed with us. There was a couple of my brother's friends and a couple of my friends, and they were bachelors, and I don't know why they didn't go back to Seattle to stay with their family. They said, "Now we're gonna stay with you guys."

MN: So what happened while you were staying in the house? How long did you stay in your Boyle Heights house?

RN: I would say about three months. Yeah. Maybe... December, that was December. December, January, February, March, April, we hit camp sometime in April, I remember. The hot weather hadn't started yet, see, and it was, December 7th was, December, January, February, March. We stayed there 'til March, I think.

MN: You had no job now. How were you able to survive?

RN: Well, the rent was cheap in those days and we were going broke. My brother had, was working at the fruit stand at that time, I was working at the wholesale, I had no bank account. My daughter, my sister, younger sister, she was, she was attending Woodberry High School at that time. And all we lived on was our savings, and we were getting concerned, said jeez, when they comin' to take us? Hell, we got no place to go, we got no income. Rent was, in those days was cheap, was, we were paying, what, I think it was twenty-eight or thirty dollars a month. And we had to pay our own utilities. My other two married sisters, they were living in their same house.

MN: Did you run out of food?

RN: Huh?

MN: Did you run out of food?

RN: No, no. We had money for groceries.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 22>

MN: So you said in March you got picked up.

RN: Huh?

MN: You said in March you got picked up?

RN: I think it was in March, end of March, 'cause like I say, they were still building the camp and it wasn't that hot yet, so it had to be about April, end of April.

MN: Who picked you up, an army truck?

RN: It wasn't no, I don't know who it was. It was a truck that came and picked us up. It took what we could carry. And all that time we were waiting in our house and my friends from Seattle were staying with us, so we, and they ate with us, and I don't know, we got by. Anyway, they came, finally they come and picked us up. We were the, we were the last Japanese group to leave Boyle Heights, or leave L.A., I would say.

MN: So you were renting your house so you didn't have any furniture to worry about, is that right?

RN: We had very little furniture. A lot of that furniture, it was a family house that we had moved, we were renting, and it had, already had minimal furniture in those days. It had everything. And they, those Mexican families around there, not many then, they came to our door to, if we had anything to sell and I remember, I think we sold them a, some kind of a table, five dollars. But most of that furniture came with the, came with the house, the beds and the great big oak dining room table came with the house. So we had very little furniture, anyway. In fact, you would say no furniture at all.

MN: So what did you bring to camp?

RN: To camp? Nothing. My mother had her sewing machine. We carried it. We carried it down to where we were gonna be picked up, but when we got there we couldn't take it with us 'cause the truck driver says, "No, you can't take nothing that you can't carry." So I don't know what we did with the sewing machine. I don't know what we did with that sewing machine, but outside of that we had nothing. All I had was a suitcase and a duffel bag. That's all I had.

MN: So this truck came and picked you up, and then they take you to the train station. Which train station did they take you to?

RN: I don't know. It was, it was very close by. It was very close by.

MN: Were there other Japanese American families there at the train station?

RN: Far as I know we were the only ones that they were picked up. They were already bunch of 'em in the train, so I don't know where they were picked up, but I know we were the only ones from Boyle Heights. I remember. And they were the ones that, after we got to camp, we got, we lived in the same block and we started talkin' and they were the ones that had small grocery stores, the Mama and Papa stores in Boyle Heights.

MN: What do you remember of the train ride?

RN: What?

MN: What do you remember of the train ride?

RN: I can't remember nothin' but the shades were pulled down. You can't see outside. We don't know where we're goin'. They pull all the shades down, 'til the train stopped then you get out and it's all dusty, we're out in the desert. We don't know, never heard of the place.

MN: How long was the train ride, more than one day?

RN: No, it can't be, about one day because it's Parker, Arizona, which is right across the Colorado River, so I don't think we even spent a night there. 'Cause I know we hit, when we got off the train we had to get on the bus, and the buses, they pulled the shades down. We're out in the desert and they made us pull the shades down, you know? So we got, we got to that place right before dark, I remember.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 23>

MN: So you didn't go to assembly center.

RN: No.

MN: You went straight to camp.

RN: No assembly center.

MN: And which camp was this?

RN: Poston. Poston Number I.

MN: Camp I.

RN: Uh-huh.

MN: Were your family able to live together?

RN: Not exactly. There were, you've seen the barracks, right? They were divided into six sections. Well, we got one barrack and we, and we had five sections. One section was for a little family, but each of my married sisters had their own barrack, or one room, so there was one, two, and my mother stayed with one sister, my younger sister lived with another married sister, and my mother, she lived with one of my other sisters. My brother, my brother, and me -- we were still unmarried -- and my Seattle friends, they'd live with us. There was five of us in one barrack, all bachelors. My two brothers and my three Seattle friends. Then the other one was, it was another Japanese family. That's all.

MN: When you got to Poston, was Camp II and III already built?

RN: No. We were the ones, they were still building ours. It was built, but they had to dig the ditch for some, for some plumbing, I think. Then they start, then they were building Camp II and III later.

MN: So since there's a lot of construction there must have been a lot of lumber around. What did you do with the lumber?

RN: Well, when we got there, there was already a big, in the center of the camp -- the camp was like this [draws a circle] -- the center of the camp was empty, all empty, and right in the center of the camp there's a, this huge pile of scrap lumber. And naturally, as soon as we could everybody from everywhere went to the lumber yard to pick up scrap lumber to make makeshift furniture, 'cause there was not a stick of furniture in the place, not even chairs. You had to make your own simple chairs and beds and stuff like that. And nails, you got all over the place, scattered with all kinds of nails. And we were lucky because this family that came with us, they were from, they were from L.A., he was a mechanic and a carpenter. He had all kinds of tools with him. Everybody borrowed his tools. I borrowed his hammer, I borrowed his other stuff. Everybody was borrowing his stuff to build the furniture. And he was a nice old guy, young guy, but very friendly, you know, Japanese. He said, yeah, go ahead and take it, so we all, everybody borrowed his hammers and everything. But then, as we picked up the nails and everything, I think about a week later or so, or some period of time, they put up a big sign: "This lumber is not for sale. It belongs to," they said, what we heard was some Jewish guy, or company, bought all that lumber. That lumber belongs, is private property. But that didn't make no difference. Nighttime we'd all go there and get what we could. You had to. This is a great big pile of lumber. You should've seen that big pile, all scrap lumber. We'd go there and we'd pick up what we wanted. Jesus. [Laughs]

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 24>

MN: So when you first arrived at Poston there was a meeting at the mess hall. Is this where you picked your cooks?

RN: What?

MN: When you first arrived at Poston there was a big meeting in the mess hall.

RN: Yeah.

MN: Is this when you picked your cooks?

RN: I don't know exactly. We had a meeting, and they told us, says, well, we have to do our own cooking and everything so we need volunteers that can do something. They said, "If you don't pick somebody among your own group here, if you don't pick 'em, what they're gonna do is bring in people from the army, soldiers, and they're gonna do the cooking and everything." So it's better that we pick somebody here, all Japanese, instead of bringing in an outsider and let them do the cooking 'cause you don't know what to expect, naturally. So common sense says you better pick your own thing. Well, it turned out that among our group, the last group to, that was on the bus, there was, we had cooks there. They had small restaurants and they were, they came on the bus with us, so they volunteered to cook. They volunteered to cook for us and the other volunteers volunteered to help, naturally. So we were lucky. We got along real good. But there was, the food was so simple they had, you didn't need a cook. Anybody could cook it.

MN: What do you remember of the food?

RN: Well, I don't know. I don't remember what the hell we ate but all I remember is every morning we had boiled eggs. Each, we each had a boiled egg, I remember, bread, no toast. We had coffee. Then later on, say a couple months later, they began to ask what we wanted. We got rice, the kids got milk, I remember. But then for meat the only thing they fed us consistently was neck bones. Everybody said, "What is this?" They didn't ever hear of neck bones. They says these are spare ribs. No, they're not spare ribs. These are, they come from a, they're neck bones. 'Cause nobody every bought neck bones, so when they're living... and so anyway, we had bread, apple butter, no butter, just apple butter, no jam. Apple butter, period. Put that on everything. [Laughs]

MN: Did you work at Poston?

RN: I did some little work. I didn't do much. I didn't do much. Most of the younger ones, Poston I was made up of all farmers. Orange County, Imperial Valley, all, they're all farmers, and they did all the work. To them that was play. They operated the trucks, the tractors, everything they operated themselves. They'd just get on there and they start doin' things, you know? But us city people, Poston I, Block 45 was made up of all city people and we don't know a thing about things like that so we don't do nothin'. Work in the kitchen maybe.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 25>

MN: So you arrived in Poston just as it was getting really hot. How did you keep cool in the summer?

RN: Well, you can't keep cool. All you do, when it's cool in the morning, in the morning all you do is sit outside or stand outside this side of the building, and the sun goes, twelve o'clock, this way, we go on this side of the building to stay in the shade. And somehow, once in a while somebody would bring a, two buckets of ice water from somewhere and we had ice water there, but as a rule it was always warm water, to drink. So you just, you just can't stay cool, go from one end of the, one side of the building to the other.

MN: You said one of the, your friends from Seattle got pretty ambitious and he dug a hole?

RN: I had one guy from Seattle and he was, he was the laziest guy. Well, he wouldn't do no kind of work, except he built a hole in the ground to cool off. Yeah, he, I said, "What the hell you doin' there?" And the guy, he dug a hole down there to stand in to keep cool, so we all took turns. [Laughs] Some people, they improvised. They had windows there, they improvised, they got gunnysacks somewhere and they wet it all the time. They had a bucket of water, they would dip it in that bucket of water and hang it up in the window, and the breeze comin' through was kind of cool. That was temporary. But that guy that made the hole in the ground, lazy as he was, he kept cool.

MN: What about at night? Did you sleep inside or did you sleep outside?

RN: We slept inside because somebody, other people, they built a platform outside their door to sleep outside. They built a platform. I don't know, they got the wood somehow and they slept outside. Us guys, we always slept inside on our hot, hot steel cots. There weren't, they weren't beds, they were those steel cots, and it's hot and by that time we still had those straw mattresses and you'd sleep on them 'cause they were, they weren't hot. They were just, just room temperature.

MN: Now, once it got into the wintertime the desert gets really cold.

RN: Well, it was cold, and they put, they had a stove in our place, but we never, they never passed out the chimneys, so we all had stove, but you can't burn nothin', there's nothin' to burn and there's no chimney so what the hell's the use of having a stove? The stove was just sittin' there all the time. So we didn't care because it was cold but it was dry, no rain or anything. So we just put on our, whatever you're wearing, and it wasn't that, real that cold.

MN: What did --

RN: 'Course the, if you had kids or something it's entirely different, but all the Japanese, they all, they all improvised. Because practically, practically all the families living at Poston, outside of our block, they're all farmers, they were all farmers from everywhere, so they know how to live in those, it was just like living on a farm maybe. [Laughs] They know what to do. The city guys are the ones that are always crabbing and complaining, you know.

MN: What did you do for recreation?

RN: Nothing. All we did was play poker. In our bunkhouse -- it was too hot to go outside -- we'd play poker. We had loose change in our pockets, we'd play, well, nickels and dimes, quarters. That's all we used to do, play poker. [Laughs]

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 26>

MN: Now your family went into Poston Camp I around March 1942, when did your family leave camp?

RN: One year later. My family, when I say my family, my unmarried brother, me, and my mother, we left camp about a year, about ten months later. We left camp about, maybe March somewhere. That, we stayed in camp not quite a year. My younger sister, she and a friend of hers -- she met her friend there -- at our camp in the office they had a bulletin board, job listings. There was a job listing working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Chicago, for office workers, so my younger sister and, she met her friend, another, somebody she met, they were reading the same thing and they went together. They got together and said, "Let's go and apply for this office work." So I don't know how they got it, whether they were, I don't know, but they just took off and went, the two of them, to work at this office. They must've had some kind of an employment agency at the camp, otherwise they wouldn't have gone. But they got settled in a place in Chicago and then after they got settled my mother, my brother, and me went, joined them in Chicago. My two married sisters, they stayed behind, and they went their own way, different places.

MN: When you got to Chicago, was it hard to find a job?

RN: You could get a job anywhere. There were signs all over. Labor was scarce. My brother went lookin' for a job, I went, we stayed at the YMCA. That was the cheapest and that's where all the guys from the camps came to stay. And over there you'd meet people from other camps and you'd talk to them and they'd tell, I work over there, or, I work over there. But jobs were so easy to find. Anybody would hire you. You could quit one job, knock on a door in another place and they'd hire you. A lot of them, first thing they did was they went to work for the Drake Hotel, which was down the street, and they would hire you doing something. But working was no problem.

MN: Did you encounter any discrimination in Chicago?

RN: Not a bit.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 27>

MN: Now, you worked in Wisconsin for a while. What did you do?

RN: What?

MN: You worked in Wisconsin for a while.

RN: Oh, yeah. Yes, I got to Chicago and my brother, he was a mechanic and he got a job workin' with cars and mechanics and everything. I went my own way and I got a job here, I got a job there. I worked one place a couple of days, I quit. I worked there, I quit. I worked one place, I worked about two, three hours then I said hell with this job, so I go to quit. "Hey, let me pay you." No, I says, "I didn't do nothin', I only worked here two hours." Said, "No, let me pay you," the guy says. "No, no, I don't want no money." So I didn't know what I wanted to do, so one day I went to the, to the employment office. I don't know why, but I went to the employment office, asked 'em, "Hey, what kind of jobs you got here?" And he told me, he had a whole list of jobs, and here he says, he says there's a job in a hatchery, chicken hatchery up in Wisconsin. I said, "Wisconsin, that's pretty far away." "No, no," he said. "This is on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. It's on the borderline. It's only about forty or fifty miles away." So he gave me the information on there and I took a bus up there and I was curious, and I got a job up there. It was a hatchery, chicken hatchery. And when I got there I was talkin' to a -- and there was already a Japanese guy workin' there, Japanese guy from camp, Nisei I think he was. And he was already workin' there in the hatchery there and I got to talkin' to him, and he says, yeah, he says, I live in a house in town. It's a small town called Burlington, small dinky town. Says, "I live there, but I walk to work over there, over the hill to the hatchery." So I says, "Well, I got a chance to work here," so he told me, "Come work here. Don't pay much, but you could stay in the same place where I stay." It's a family home, but they had rooms to rent.

So I worked there for about a year because the guy told me, the hatchery owner says, well, the job I got open," he says, I need somebody to work in the hatchery during the hatchery time. I got my special chickens, special Little Rock chickens, they call 'em, and he got a hatchery there, he needs somebody to work nighttimes to watch the hatchery. It wasn't a real big place, but it was a place where, for the chick sexers come and used to determine the sex, each chick hatchery. Well anyway, so I said okay, so I worked nights there, watchin' the hatchery. There's nothing to do, so I'd just work on the eggs and watch the temperature of the hatchery until the chicks come out.

So after the chicks all hatched later on I kept working there for a while and don't pay much so I worked there for not quite a year. So I said hell with it, I says, went I went back to live, went to work, I went back to Chicago. My mother was living in a, with my brother. They were living in this housekeeping house, third floor. In those days you don't think about it, but after I think about all those days I felt so sorry for my mother. She's living by herself all day long. And so what she used to do was walk down three flights of stairs. Only place you could live in those days was always the third floor. All the bottoms are always filled up. So she'd go to the store, do a little grocery shopping, little bit of housekeeping, 'cause we had no cooking utensils. All you had to do was cook with what you got, so it was very, very miserable for her, nobody to talk to until I come home from work, and my brother was there but he'd be gone. So I came back from Wisconsin and I kept, I lived with my mother. Yeah, it was very bad for her.

[Interruption]

MN: How long were you in Chicago, how many years?

RN: Three years.

MN: Now, while you were in Chicago did you have to fill out the "loyalty questionnaire"?

RN: What kind of questionnaire?

MN: The "loyalty questionnaire."

RN: War?

MN: The "loyalty."

RN: Not that, nothing.

MN: You and your brother were draft age. Were you ever drafted?

RN: Never drafted. I was, I always kept ahead. My brother never joined the army, never got a call for it. I was in Chicago, when I came back from the hatchery and I worked in Chicago at this big, it was this big factory, the foundry, or steel mill more or less, and I got a job there. I got a notice to join the army, to report to the army. I took the notice and I took it to the, to my boss, my foreman -- International Harvester, that's a very big industry -- and he just took it and, and I was working at this place, a steel mill, where they make war equipment and all that, so I never had to go. Never went for a physical even. So I worked there until I quit, 'til the war ended.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 28>

MN: How did you hear that the war had ended?

RN: It was on the newspaper, that's all.

MN: How did you feel when you heard the war had ended?

RN: Well, I don't feel nothin'. I was on the, in the Chicago Loop and people were just milling around, talking. Nobody bothered you. You would think somebody, they'd come up and beat you up or something, but back there everybody mind their own business. How could they know if you were Japanese or Chinese? They don't know Orientals in those days.

MN: Your parents are from Hiroshima. Did you lose any relatives in the atomic bombing?

RN: I had no relatives in Japan. My folks never mentioned, when my father was living and my mother was living and all that, they never once discussed, all the time I was living they never discussed their relatives or my relatives in Japan, like cousins or uncles. It was a funny thing. Yeah, it was, all I know is they're from Hiroshima and that was it.

MN: So once the war was over did you return to Los Angeles?

RN: Not right away. Not right away.

MN: What did you do after the war?

RN: Well, I kept up my job, and I didn't know how long they're gonna keep me there. It was a big, big factory and I don't know, I kept workin' there. The pay was good. And so I didn't learn a trade or anything, so anyway, you think, when you're young you think, well, I'd like to go back to Los Angeles, but everybody was saying, "If you go back to Los Angeles, what you gonna do?" But I did a lot of things and everything happened so fast that, and it's a lot of little things. I did a lot of things. I didn't want to stay in Chicago. I said to myself, hell with this town. Dirty old Chicago, I says, living in these tenement houses. But yeah, so what I did, I was still workin' and drawing my paycheck, I put a ad in the, I wrote to the Seattle, not the Seattle Times but the L.A. Times. I don't know how I did it, I don't know if I bought a Los Angeles Times paper or not, but I think I did. Anyway, I put a ad in the want ads section in the L.A. paper, you know the want ads. So I don't know exactly what happened. I says wanted, job in L.A. Three lines I made, contact, my address. And sure enough, this guy contacted me from Los Angeles. He says he's got a chicken hatchery, he, "wants somebody to work in my chicken hatchery." And I wrote back to him. Yeah, I says, I'm interested. But I don't recall the pay or whereabouts, where it was or anything. He says, I got a job for you. So I talked to my brother, I told my brother, says, you stay with my mother -- 'cause he was going around with his girlfriend before he got married. He got married later on. But so, "You stay with my mother here, I'm goin' back to Los Angeles. I got a job offer somehow."

So we agreed it, agreed on that. I went back there by myself on a train, and my one sister was already back in L.A., and he came to pick me up on the train down at Union Station, and I stayed with him. And he took me out to this chicken farm out in Cypress and I talked to the guy. "Yeah," he said, "I got a hatchery here. I need somebody to help take care of the hatchery and feed my chickens, all that." So I said okay. I don't even know how much he paid me, and I had no furniture or nothing, just a bare room. He says, "This is where you stay." I had a stove there, but nothing else. And so I said okay, and I don't know how in the hell I got by living there, bedding or anything. All I had was my suitcase and my overcoat. Anyway, I worked there for a while, just getting by, and, oh, the hell with this guy, I says. I'm workin' hard. So I quit. I told him the hell with the job, I says I don't want... so I went back to L.A. and stayed with my sister. They were, they came back, they had those three kids too and they're living in a small house up here somewhere. Not here, but at Boyle Heights.

I had to go back to Chicago to pick up my, pick up my mother. I go back there and in the meantime, somewhere along the line my brother got married back there, and he, so he stayed in Chicago, him and his wife and all that. So anyway, things happened pretty fast. I picked up my mother, we came back, came back to L.A., and we stayed with my, stayed with my sister, real crowded. And good thing I came back here; the house that I was living in before the war, up here in Lorena Street, it was open. The Italian people, the owner, he says yeah, the house is open, so we went back and stayed in the same house that we had to move out of. [Laughs] Right up there on Lorena Street. Yeah, it was, but it was pretty hectic in those days.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 29>

MN: Anything else you want to add on to your life?

RN: Huh?

MN: Anything else you want to add on to your life story?

RN: Nothing.

MN: I have one other question to ask you. We were talking the other day about how you felt about what we do.

RN: Huh?

MN: How you, how you felt about what we do about recording Japanese American history.

RN: Yeah, what about it?

MN: What do you think about what we do? Do you think we're just wasting our time recording life histories like this?

RN: No, you're not wasting your time because the third generation, their opportunities are open and they know it. All these different people I hear about and what the kids are doing, you'd be surprised all the different work that these third, people like your generation are doing. I got a guy living with me and he has two sons. One day I asked him, hey, what are your kids doin' now? 'Cause this was, say, forty years ago when the kids were small, same age as my son. He says, he told me what they were doing. They're very, very high technical jobs. I can't remember what it was, but I never heard of those jobs, but they're real technical jobs his two boys are workin', almost, to me sounded like they're the same field, but they're not. So people like you, there's job openings and they're finding different work to do. They're doing it on their own.

MN: But do you think it's important to record our Japanese American history?

RN: Well, to me they're interested in Japanese American history. People like you, your age, they're not interested in Japanese American history. Only people interested in Japanese American history is the third generation or so. Even me, second generation, don't care about Japanese American history, because you're, after all these intermarriages and everything, it don't mean nothin'.

MN: So should we just forget about it?

RN: [Laughs] I don't know what to say. I don't care what, you're gonna take care of yourself. My kids are all on their own. I don't know. And my daughter, she married a white guy. They got a, they got a ainoko kid and he's on his own now, pretty soon, and he has nothin' to do with Japanese. They got nothin' to do with Japanese. It's immaterial what you do 'cause they all blend in little by little.

MN: So you don't think somewhere along the line he might become interested?

RN: What?

MN: You don't think if, after he gets older he might become interested?

RN: Who?

MN: Your grandson.

RN: I don't think so. I don't think so. Like Mark, my son's boy, he's a hapa, right? What, what's he got to lookin' forward to? Nothin' but his own life, his own American life. He's got nothin' to do with Japanese life. Depends on who he marries, in the first place. I don't know. My sister, my daughter up in Seattle, she's got a hapa boy and he lives in an American neighborhood, everything. He's got nothin' to do with Japanese. He's got a hakujin girlfriend, and so I don't know what he's gonna do. He, with a Japanese background. I don't think he even cares about his background.

MN: Anything else you want to add, Roy?

RN: Huh?

MN: Anything else you want to add?

RN: No. That's why I, lot of Sansei, they, they're interested in your future, but I don't it makes any difference.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.