<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, we're gonna get to that a little bit later. I still have more questions. The prewar life in Brooks in this area just fascinates me.

ES: Okay.

TI: And I'm curious, you mentioned Japanese picnics, were there other, like, Japanese community events that you can recall? Like when they did Obon or something like, or anything like that?

ES: There was a group of Buddhist people, Buddhist community, and they were from Fukuoka. I remember that because they spoke a complete different dialect than Okayama people, and I could hardly understand them. But when we were teenagers, while we were in elementary school, my father decided that we needed a Japanese school, so -- in that Brooks and Salem community -- so my dad was the one who had to get the teachers for our Japanese school. We had to go to Japanese school on Saturday when all of our Caucasian friends, Saturday was off, but we had to go to school. And so I know I went as far as the twelfth grade, which was about as much as I would learn when, as long as you're in America you don't go anymore because you're on to college or something and you just don't have time. But the Fukuoka people, majority of them raised, they had a dry cleaning establishment in Salem. And there were a few, there's one couple that had a Japanese restaurant, also in Salem, Tanaka's.

TI: So would that be like the largest, I guess, or the place where you'd have a Japanese restaurant, like Japanese food, did you have a grocery store in Salem?

ES: Yes. And they did quite well, I think, made a living. We used to go once in a while to that. And they grew hops in Independence area. It's north of Salem. But they seemed to have come from a different area of Japan, and once in a while we'd go and visit them.

TI: And would you see that, going back to the Japanese language school, I mean, so you have Fukuoka and Okayama, was there a difficulty in learning language?

ES: See, we didn't go together. The Fukuoka people seemed to kind of be a very clannish group. They...

TI: So did they have their own separate Japanese language school?

ES: Now that I don't know, if they did or not. But we had to go, and there was quite a, I would say we must've been at least thirty or forty students.

TI: So that's quite a few. That's a, that's a good size school.

ES: Well, quite a few different families, and we'd have Japanese teachers that come on Saturday from Portland to teach us. And so we learned, at least we thought we did. We didn't really like it because we thought all our friends, hakujin friends, didn't have to go to school but we did. But now, when I think back on it, I thought we should've really studied hard.

TI: Was it hard for you? Because your dad was somebody who had set the school up and so you were kind of like the daughter of kind of an important man who had done this.

ES: Right.

TI: So was there pressure for you to do well?

ES: Uh-huh. And then eventually, as we got into high school, we had a Japanese church that my father and, there's another family by, the Watanabe family, who had a dry cleaning establishment in Salem. This was, they were not Fukuoka people, but they were, they got into our group and they were Protestants and they were, they had I think five or six children.

TI: Now, when you say Watanabe family, so I know that Taul Watanabe went to, went to Willamette in Salem.

ES: Oh yes, Taul. Yes, yes.

TI: So is that the family that you're talking about?

ES: Yes, yes. They're very good friends of mine.

TI: Okay.

ES: Of course, Taul is gone, but his wife, second wife, Sachi, is still in Bellevue, and she's in a retirement home like I am.

TI: So they grew up in that, in that area.

ES: In Salem.

TI: And that's that connection to Willamette.

ES: Hoshi Watanabe used to teach me my piano lessons and so we used to be in their home quite frequently, and they always looked forward to my dad bringing vegetables because my dad always had to take me to the piano lesson. But it was...

TI: So there's a nice family connection.

ES: Yes. We had quite a large group of Protestant Japanese in Salem. We used to come to Seattle for Young People's Christian Conference. Go to Spokane and we went to Hood River. It was a good group.

TI: It sounds like a really rich community life that you grew up with.

ES: Yes. I thought it was.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.