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MN: Now, Tak, you came of age during the Great Depression.

TY: Yeah.

MN: So how did the Great Depression affect your family?

TY: 1929, tears came out of my eyes. It was terrible. Well, I was about ten, nine, let's see, '17, '29, about ten, nine or ten years old. I don't quite remember, but it was bad, man, I'm telling you. My father's farm was going pretty well and the produce he was shipping out was okay, and then all of a sudden everything went down, down, down. And at that time my father was growing cucumbers and carrots and yasaimono, like that, and then he got a, he got a check from the market, I don't recall how much. It was about five hundred, five hundred dollars, something like that. I was about eleven years old, he said "Take it to the bank for me 'cause I'm busy." So he signed the check and then he told me to take it to the bank, so I went, I went to the bank and I deposited it for him, and then the news came out the next day, said the bank's closed, shut the doors. And it was terrible, after depositing the money the day before and the bank shut the doors the next day. That's how bad it was. And then I don't quite recall, but we just went on about our business, and then I guess produce sold 'cause everybody had to eat. And it was pretty tough, I guess, for my folks, because as a little kid you really don't know what the situation is, so I know that the bank closed and times were tough and Dad had some cash money at home, I guess, and just, things went along, but he could not buy us a shoe, shoe or clothing and all that. I think we had to really work to the bone, and it was pretty hard for the folks to fix our shoe for us. We went to school on a torn sole and our foot sticking out of our shoes. And I forgot what kind of pants we wore. We wore some torn pants to school. It didn't matter; we went to learn, besides the looks, so it didn't matter. But days were tough. I could see it. And I was a little kid, so I didn't know the feeling of it, but I can tell that my folks were having a hard time.

MN: Now this check that was deposited and the bank closed, did your father ever get any of the money back?

TY: That I don't recall. They shut the doors, see, that time it was Bank of, Bank of Italy. That was the main bank. Then the Bank of America bought the Bank of Italy out, so then something happened in between there, so I don't really know exactly.

MN: And that's the building that's on Western and 166th, I think? Or 169th?

TY: No, this one was in Hawthorne. This was on Hawthorne Boulevard and, I think it was on Hawthorne Boulevard and El Segundo Boulevard. On the corner there was a Bank of Italy there. I think that's, that's where it was. They shut the doors, no more bank, no more bank. That's it.

MN: Now, during the Depression, did the government bring people to your father's farm as part of Roosevelt's Work Progress Administration program?

TY: Yeah. That was in, what year was that? '25, '29, so let's see, President Roosevelt was in there about '31, I forgot year he was there. The country suffered so bad and the recession was so bad, people was out of work. It was terrible, and people laying on the streets, nothing to eat, this and that. Then President Roosevelt, I guess it was, formed the Workers', WPA, Workers' Public, WPA, Association, Workers', what was it? What was it called? Workers' Public Program, I guess it was. It was WPA, anyway. And then, like my father was farming then, then they bring fifteen people saying, well, can you use these people to do some of your work, hire them, because there's no work. And the bus would bring ten, fifteen people, my folks would hire them, and at that time he was having some, growing some onions, so my dad made 'em top onions, this and that. And then I don't know how long that lasted, but it lasted for quite a few weeks.

At the same time the government, through the WPA work, they had to put people to work, so they had them plant eucalyptus trees on the coastline. All the eucalyptus trees that you see know, if you know what eucalyptus trees are, the WPAs planted 'em, 1932, '31, '33, something like that. And that's what, that's what brought the economy back, little by little. And then '32, let's see, yeah, the economy was coming back slowly and my father was having a hard time and I had to help him because due to the, due to the recession, and then my mother went to Japan in 1936 for a little vacation and then she was there for about five or six months, and then she came back home. And the first thing she told us was Japan and United States gonna have a war. "Mom, you're crazy. Thing will never happen." "Oh yes, Japan and United States gonna have a war. You watch." Well, "Mom, Japan don't have enough oil to come to Hawaii, they don't have no oil to come to United States. How are they gonna fight United States? There's no way, Mom." Mama said, "You watch." 1941 came, boom, and that, it happened.

MN: Don't go there yet. Let's not go there yet. I have some other questions. Let me ask a little bit about your shoes. I know a lot of people during your era sometimes didn't even have shoes. Did you put cardboard in your shoes?

TY: [Laughs] Cardboard. Newspaper.

MN: Newspaper in your shoes?

TY: Newspaper, cardboard, yeah, like you say. Say like, part of the shoe was mostly over here, right, and this part was always bare because the folks couldn't afford to patch my shoes or buy us a new shoe or whatever, and our stocking was wearing out over here and was barefoot over here. And we wore a shoe like that for I don't, I forgot how long, but for the longest time, and we used to go to school like that. And then more or less barefoot, maybe it was better that we took our shoes off, but shoes helped. We done that for a long time, let's see, 1930, about a couple years, and then I guess he earned enough money to buy us a pair of shoes. And then school pants, my mother bought the cheapest pants. At that time corduroy was the cheapest little, cheapest pants that they could buy. Corduroy pants, that's all we wore to school, half torn. Couldn't buy another pair, so that's how it was.

MN: And did you wear the same pants every day?

TY: Every day. She washed it on Saturday and dried it, Monday we wore the same pants, pants torn over here. She was so busy she didn't have time to patch it and we wore torn pants to school, at that time not only us but everybody else. And that's how tough it was. It really was.

MN: Tell me about your outhouse.

TY: My outhouse, or benjo?

MN: What was your, what did you use for toilet paper?

TY: Telephone book. I don't know where they got the telephone book, but we had a telephone book. Okay, our benjo was dug in the ground, hole in the ground maybe five, six foot deep, and I forgot how long it lasted to fill it up, but then it got filled up, and then after it got so full then they dug another hole and shoved that, the hole, the dirt that came out of that hole was used to cover the old hole, filled up hole, then they moved the little two by four outhouse over the new hole, and that's how, how bad the sanitation was, or that, how the countryside sanitation was. No running water. Of course, there's running water for the bathtub and the kitchen now, but in the outhouse type that was what it was out in the farmland. So the city folks, city folks already had sanitation. They had this toilet, ceramic toilet bowl, and they had this, they had a tank upstairs on the ceiling, and they filled the water through the pipeline in the ceiling tank and then when they finished they had a chain from the tank to the, to right here. After they finished, wipe their butt, this, that, they pulled this chain and it will flush the toilet. That's how the city was, Los Angeles. Then we had an outhouse in the country, and that was difference between the city and the farm.

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