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MN: You said you spent about a month in Gardena after you left Imperial Valley for the summer. And where did you stay?

MT: On a farm. Like I said, we had an uncle over here, so we'd all just pitch a tent, or if he has a room there, we would rent another building, he has another building there. They too used to move a little bit. We'd get one room or something like that. When we were little, Father and Mother, we'd all just jump in one bedroom and live, 'cause we'd take our own blankets and everything, take pots and pans and cook.

MN: And then from Gardena you went to San Diego for about a month?

MT: Yes.

MN: Where did you stay in San Diego?

MT: There was a farm, there was a Japanese man that has a farm, and we'd just pay him a little bit. I don't know how much they paid him, but they paid him for the month and we used all his water that he had, electricity, and we'd just string a wire and have it light.

MN: Did you go out and swim in the beach?

MT: Oh, yes. We used to go every morning. That and dig clams, go fishing, that was our biggest thing, go fishing. And then you had all the fish you want to eat. And we used to catch what they call covinas, I think that's a trout like, near the beach, though. Any fish that was close to the beach, you could catch. They had a pier in La Jolla that we used to fish at. We even had some lobsters; my dad used to catch lobsters there. You weren't supposed to, but we used to catch 'em.

MN: You had a lot of fresh seafood.

MT: Oh, yes. We would eat all the fishes that we caught. When you go to Imperial Valley, you didn't have those fishes anymore. Only fishes that came from Los Angeles to El Centro, which is about once a week. That's the only time you could get fish, tofu or anything else like that, that was once a week. But this man, he used to bring quite a bit of fish, so he figured that all the farmers going to come. Then he used to go to Brawley, El Centro, Calexico, Holtville, he had to go to those place and give them, get the Japanese food. 'Cause your rice and like that came from Los Angeles. Even the rice you had to buy, so you'd buy a hundred pound rice, or how many rice you're gonna need for the, through the winter.

MN: So was it in San Diego that you learned how to swim?

MT: Yeah, you jump in the ocean and just swim. But you don't swim too much because... well, the waves, you can't swim too much. But we never went to a pool because that cost money. Sometime when we get a place to pitch our tent on the farm, we used to pitch a tent on the beach. And you have to pay to, pitch your tent. But they used to have a public toilet there, and even hot water for showers. Well, not hot water, but warm water. So we would get showers, so then we used to swim from seven o'clock in the morning, jump in the ocean, play around and build up a big appetite, take a quick shower and then go eat. Then my poor mother had to work again. But we used to enjoy it over there because it wasn't really that bad. Like I say, we tried to help my mother as much as we could, wash dishes and things like that. Because we had two tents, and we used to pitch it apart. And then there's a flap that's supposed to make it so you can have a closure for the tent, but we used to pick it up and connect it so that we can cook underneath and eat, that was our dining area. But that's the way we lived over there.

MN: So when you were out in San Diego, were there other Japanese American families?

MT: Oh, yes. They'd come out there, too. Those that could afford to come out there. You had a gasoline, they knew you had to pay for your own gasoline. To get to San Diego from Imperial Valley, it used to be real hard, because there was only one road that went over the mountain to San Diego. And they had the one place with the Mountain Spring Road, it was very steep and hard for cars to go up. Your car, you had to have a lot of power. See, like my father, well, he never had too old of a car, so we could make it. But some of those people, you had old cars, they won't make it up. So those people, lot of times, they used to come to where the Mountain Spring grade is, and they used to camp in the desert. There's a cave there that had a running water, or cold water, it's a mountain spring water that's very, very good. Oh, we used to love that water 'cause it's cold in the summertime. You don't have to filter it or nothing because that's, you know, it's spring water. So they used to go there and camp. Well, we used to go there sometimes too when we'd come back from San Diego too early or we'd go over there and camp, live out there about a week.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.