<Begin Segment 8>

ES: But we did go to this Hazel Green Church, which was a Caucasian church, when we were just little, and they didn't have a Japanese church until, until... let's see, that was about nineteen, in the, '32, '33. I think I graduated from high school in 1936, so I think when I was in grade school, we still spoke Japanese at home and we still ate Japanese food, and they'd have potlucks at school, at Hazel Green School, the parents, teachers. And they'd say, okay, everybody just bring your, whatever you want to bring, and the first time they were saying they were gonna have a potluck, well, now what if, what are we going to take? You know, I just wasn't too sure. And so I think my dad, he decided to make sandwiches, so bought bread and, I don't know what he did. I think my mother decided he could baloney or ham or whatever and make, put butter on it and whatever, and took sandwiches. Well, I was really kind of ashamed to think that we were eating not the right kind of food that the rest of the people --

TI: You mean ashamed that you might bring the wrong food or something?

ES: Wrong food. It would be embarrassing to me. But we got used to it, and --

TI: Well I'm curious, what did the others bring? You brought sandwiches, what did the other kids bring?

ES: They brought, they had Jell-O salads and fruit salad and potato salad and all this that my mother was never used to making. And it would've been nice if she could've made Japanese food, sushi or something, and taken it and introduced it to, like when we were teenagers, or when we married and had children, we'd take our own and they'd love it. Like they, I'd just make sushi and take it, and they still enjoy it. But we were kind of embarrassed that none of us could do that, and so there were other Japanese families, but they wouldn't even participate. We had Japanese families that worked for my dad, worked for my dad on the farm, and...

TI: I'm curious, the other kids, so what background, like ethnicity, like where would, where did they come from? Like different countries?

ES: Well, I think they would come from different countries, not just Okayama people.

TI: No, I mean the whites.

ES: Oh, the white people. Well, they had farms before we got there, so they, let's see, the Loonys were Scandinavians, and then there were Williamsons, I think they were also Scandinavians.

TI: So kind of similar to the Seattle area.

ES: Yes.

TI: There's a strong Scandinavian influence. I was just kind of curious.

ES: And they had cows and sheep, and they grew grain, they had corn and fruit trees, but we never thought too much about it until we were at an age where we were in school.

TI: No, but I was curious if, like a potluck like that, if you ever saw ethnic food, like lutefisk or something like that that was Scandinavian that they would bring.

ES: Well, that was all really wonderful for us, but we, the Scandinavian people I know, I had friends of my own in my class and their mother baked bread, and this was something that my mother never did. We always bought our bread, Wonder Bread. And so I'd take baloney or ham or something like that and make a sandwich, and my friends would envy me for having a store bread. And so we used to exchange our bread because I liked their bread because it was so good. It was homemade.

TI: [Laughs] And they wanted the white store bread.

ES: Yeah. And I remember that so thoroughly. It seemed like it was crazy for me now when I think about it. And they always used to bring Jell-O, and I never had Jell-O at home. My mother would, I remember her making kanten, which was similar but not Jell-O, and with whipped cream. And of course they had cows so that they had lots of cream and so they can have all the whipped cream they want. It was a different experience.

TI: Well did you ever, for lunch, bring Japanese food?

ES: No. No, never did. And you know, but when we met on picnics, the Japanese, there were quite a few Japanese in that Salem area, Independence and Salem and, well there was little -- [coughs] excuse me -- little communities, like Quinaby. I don't know if you've heard of that area. It was a farming community.

TI: And again, all these were kind of more like truck farming, things like lettuce and celery and other things?

ES: Yes, but not large farms. My dad had the largest of all the farms and he finally took care of all these people, the farm, and when they grew celery, well my dad would have a lot more celery to send to the market and he'd have orders from different groups of people that, not just local. They'd send celery by the carloads as the years went by, and then my dad would let the smaller farm people order, cut their celery as many as, in proportion to their farm. They made it so that everybody could have their share.

TI: So let me make sure I understand this, so when he sold it he would help the smaller farmers by, by helping to sell their...

ES: Their percentage.

TI: Their percentage, their produce.

ES: So that they will have their share of their farm.

TI: And that helped the smaller farmers because your father's farm was large enough that he could talk directly with these larger buyers and do that.

ES: Sure. And so he was kind of a boss in that area for farming, in that big Salem community, but then he was getting to an age where he really wanted my sons, his sons to take over. But of course they went on to college and so they weren't home very much anymore, and so he was, at the time of the war he still was in the prime. Yes, and I thought, now why is the government moving us when...

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.