<Begin Segment 11>

MN: Now, you're the second child but the first son, and it sounds like there was a lot of pressure for you to work and help your father out. What about the firstborn who is your sister? What, did she have to help out on the farm?

TY: She did, yeah. She helped weed, cut weeds, and she helped, well, my father used to raise a lot of carrots and the beets and turnips and all that, so she was pretty good on her fingers so she helped tend. In those days you just plant seeds. Seeds were cheap, I guess. Not broadcast, but with a seeder, and they used to have to thin it out to give space for it grow, she used to help doing that on our lots. Yeah, she was good with her fingers.

MN: Now, I want to ask you a little bit about your mother. Did she have her own little plot of land that she grew Japanese vegetables?

TY: Well, on the side she did, yeah. She, especially for the table, she'd grow azukimame, she'd grow shiso, she'd grow daikon, she would grow necessity things for the kitchen, I guess. And it used to be kind of fun to watch her, watch her separate the beans from the hull, and she would cut the beans and then she would lay it on the canvas, and then she would wait, she would pound it every day just to loosen the seed from the hull and then she would wait for a kind of breezy or windy day and soon as that happened she'd go out there and she would take a handful and put it up there and let the wind blow all the hulls away, and the seeds would drop. That's how she used to do it to, to get her azukimame. She was pretty, I wouldn't say intelligent, but she was a pretty handy woman. I used to watch her, so that's how she raised our food. Imo, she used to raise imo, sweet potato, and nagaimo, used to raise all that on the side. And so she didn't buy much vegetables; we had all the vegetables at home.

MN: You, I asked you about your schedule and you talked about having breakfast. What did your mother make for breakfast?

TY: Well, she didn't really specially make breakfast. We had gohan and fish, leftover fish from the night before. Those days were tough days, you know. Fish leftover, we had gohan, and once a week we would get a treat, pancake. It was a big treat for us, pancake, and in strawberry season she would make pancakes and she would make this, what do you call it, shortcake with pancakes, and that was a big treat for us. Otherwise it was fish and rice, maybe tsukemono.

MN: So you folks ate a lot of fish, even in the morning.

TY: Yeah. We used to, yeah.

MN: Where did your mother purchase the fish from?

TY: Fish man used to come. Japanese fish man used to come with a little panel truck, used to have all kinds of fish and tofu, konnyaku, this and that.

MN: So he wasn't just selling fish. He was selling konnyaku and tofu.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MN: And your mother, I guess, I assume she puts it in the icebox to store the fish?

TY: Yeah.

MN: What kind of fish did you usually eat?

TY: My mother came from a fish, fish cultural family, so she knew exactly what kind of fish she wanted to eat and she knew how fresh the fish was, and so she would buy the freshest fish on the, on the delivery truck. And if the fresh fish man didn't have the freshest fish she wouldn't buy it. And I'd say, "Mom, the fish man came, how come you didn't get any fish?" She said, "Oh, they weren't fresh." "How can you tell, Mom?" She said, "Well, you only buy the fish with the eye that's still glowing and shining. Otherwise don't buy the fish." She used to tell us that. So she said in order to make sashimi or to buy good fish or, buy the fish with the eye pika pika. That's what she'd say. And she was brought up in the fish, katsuobushi factory family. You know what katsuobushi is?

MN: Yeah, and you had fresh katsuobushi all the time at your house. How did you manage to get that?

TY: My mother's brother would mail it. He would mail a box, little bitty box with three, four, five katsuobushi, real, about this big, about that round. We used to have katsuobushi almost every night. It was, now you can hardly buy it. You buy little pack about this big and that big, costs you two, three dollars or four dollars, whatever. [Laughs]

MN: Now, did your family have the dried katsuobushi and you shaved it?

TY: Yeah.

MN: Can you share with us -- well, I'm sure a lot of people don't know what this box looks like -- how do you make fresh katsuobushi?

TY: How do you make fresh katsuobushi?

MN: How do you shave it?

TY: How do we shave it? Well, they, she used to have a shaving box. There used to be a box, I don't know, I guess they used to sell little katsuobushi tsuri box. It was about, a box about that long and about maybe that wide with one blade in it and we used to go like back and forth, tsuru the fish and shave off so much at a time, and she'd say, "Oh, that's enough." So we used to put shaved katsuo on rice, tofu, and fish and everything we eat, we'd put katsuobushi on because we had plenty of katsuobushi 'cause my brother was in the business.

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