Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Ben Tonooka Interview
Narrator: Ben Tonooka
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: February 6, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-tben-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: And then you moved into Fresno, the town of Fresno.

BT: Town of Fresno, yes.

MN: How did your mother find a place to live there?

BT: I think it was all family friends that took care of her.

MN: What was this new place of living like? Was it an apartment house?

BT: Yeah, the first house was more, all I remember, it was more like a shack. It was just one square building, and I don't know how many rooms it had, but very possible we all slept in the same room. But I remember that house was really small.

MN: Were you able to make friends in the neighborhood?

BT: Yeah, right, about half a block, there was a family there, had about six kids. And one of 'em was my age, and we became good friends.

MN: Was this a Japanese American family?

BT: Yes.

MN: How did your mother support the family? She has this baby that's less than one year old, four other young kids, how can she go to work?

BT: Yeah, she, of course, she didn't work for about a year or so, until Harley got a little bit bigger. But she depended a lot on my oldest sister. Yeah, so she kind of looked after the family while my mother went to work. Of course, we were in school too.

MN: Did your mother ever mention wanting to return to Japan at this time?

BT: No, she never mentioned it. I don't think she wanted to go back.

MN: Did your family ever have to go dumpster diving for food?

BT: No, it never got that bad. We had county aid. They gave us some food and stuff, provisions.

MN: Can you share with us what kind of food you got?

BT: The only thing that I remember was this, some kind of pancake mix that we always got. And I just grew to hate that. And also always had a supply of apricot jam, so those two things that, well, apricot jam I still don't care for, but the pancakes I learned to enjoy. Yeah.

MN: But later on, I mean, are these the same kind of pancakes that you remembered when you were, as a child?

BT: No, I can't remember what the name of the, the mix, the batter was, but it wasn't like what we have now. It was more coarse.

MN: Now, the Japanese American community, especially at that time, were very, very reluctant to receive any kind of assistance. Did your mother ever share with you how she felt during that time?

BT: No. She, I guess she felt we were too small to understand. But, yeah, I know that it must've been very difficult, and I know that she always stressed on us to do right 'cause people are watching us because we don't have a father. Thinking back, that was a lot of pressure putting on the young kids, but that's the way we grew up.

MN: Now, when you were about ten or eleven years old, you had this incident where you complained about the food. Can you share what lessons you learned at that time?

BT: Yeah, I really don't remember what led into it, but I remember she chased me out of the house. And I'm pretty sure it was I made some bad remarks about the food, I guess, and here she is trying her best to put food on the table, and me complaining. So I never complained about food after that. [Laughs] Even to this day.

MN: Now, when your family no longer received the county aid with the, getting pancakes, what did your mother start serving at home?

BT: You know, I don't remember. But she made, like cooking mostly vegetables and maybe some, throw some meat in there wherever, but I know she'd, these cans, she used a lot of this canned corned beef, which I liked. She made good, good food. I don't know why I complained that time, but, but, yeah.

MN: Did anyone in your area make fresh tofu?

BT: There was a tofu shop in J-Town, yeah. So every so often we would go there, pick some up, so we had fresh tofu then. It's not packaged like it is now. You usually bought three cakes, and I remember they'd put it in a cigarette carton. Three of 'em just fit perfectly in there, yeah. So we ate, we ate pretty, quite a bit of tofu and tempura.

MN: So you had to save those empty cigarette cartons?

BT: No, the tofu maker, he had a supply of those. I don't know where he got 'em, but, yeah.

MN: So about a year later or so, your mother started working. Can you share with us how she managed, well, what she did, and how did she manage with the younger kids around?

BT: Yeah, well, like my two older sisters and myself, we were independent, take care of each other, but my two younger brothers, my mother would take 'em out in the field. And like when they, when she's working out in the vineyard there, she would put my two brothers in a large, what they call a sweatbox, and put 'em in there. And she'd do the work, and going up the road, the vines, and then when she comes back she would see if the kids needed something, changing diaper or whatever. So she did that for some time.

MN: Was she able to keep up with everybody else?

BT: Oh yeah. That's one thing, she would never fall back. She, she kept up with all the men. There were some other ladies too, working out there, but it's mostly men.

MN: Sounds like a very hard life. Did your mother get sick a lot?

BT: No. I don't remember her getting sick. She wasn't a big lady. Well, she was tall for an Issei, a little over five feet, but she was slim. But I guess she was pretty strong.

MN: So your mother's doing the backbreaking farm work all day. Who did all the cooking and the washing the clothes?

BT: Yeah, I think my older sister done a lot of that, especially washing the clothes. And then, of course, cooking, at dinnertime my mother usually, I think, did it. But yeah, my oldest sister, she was sort of a second mother. She looked after us and stuff like that.

MN: So once your mother started to, started work, you moved from Eunice to Ivy Avenue. What was this house like?

BT: It was a, it was an old house, but at least it had two bedrooms. Well, my two sisters had the one bedroom, and the other bedroom was a large one where my mother and my two brothers and myself, we slept in there.

MN: Can you share with us a little story about how you played with the little empty thread spools?

BT: Yeah. [Laughs] The front room started to sag. In other words, the floor wasn't level anymore. So we used to get these empty spools and go to the high end of the floor and let it roll down. We'd have races with it. We made our own games.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.