<Begin Segment 5>
KN: And so your aunt is there with her husband, they have arrived because they wanted opportunities or possibly jobs. And they went to Kauai, sponsored your folks, and you moved to a certain location on Kauai. Can you tell us about that and describe it?
MY: Kapaa?
KN: Where is that?
MY: Kapaa, Kauai. Yeah, very good memories, and I still have ties to Kauai, Kapaa, I'm proud of that place. There were very supportive families there to help my parents. Okay, the one that comes to mind is the Furugen family, Minoru Furugen family. They owned the Quality Market at that time, and they gave credit to my parents who couldn't pay for groceries, but they gave them credit. And I remember they're telling my dad that they know that the kids will pay the, what do you call, the debt later on. So they had confidence in my dad. And come to think of it, the Quality Market right now is the Big Save shopping center in Kapaa. So we have good memories of that family, and to this day feel very grateful, how they treated my parents and us.
KN: What part of the town did you actually live in? I mean, it's small, but it's big. There's different areas.
MY: Yeah, the area that we lived was called, by the rubbish pile. That sounds funny but it's close to the dump. Oh, they call it landfill now or what other nice terminology, but those days, "Where do you live?" "Oh, by the Kapaa rubbish dump." We had a big farm there, close by, bananas.
KN: So your parents didn't work on the sugar plantations there, but they did work in the canneries.
MY: Right.
KN: So your father, you mentioned, worked for ninety cents an hour and he did various jobs. And still, though, I mean, your family was pretty busy because you had to support so many family members. Did your mother work?
MY: My mother was a seasonal worker, where when they had a pineapple season, she worked at the cannery. And then come home and do the farming also.
KN: What kind of job did she do at the cannery, do you remember?
MY: Yeah, she was a packer. (...) After Ginaca, you go down and the trimmers and then the packers. I worked in the cannery also on a Ginaca machine.
KN: Okay, so what is a Ginaca machine for people who are not familiar with that?
MY: Oh, yeah. That's an interesting invention where it's a core, it peels the pineapple and cores it also, (to get it ready for the "trummers.")
KN: So you just push the pineapple in the machine.
MY: Yeah, right. There's a conveyor belt that goes through where you push the (pineapple on to it). Very, very boring, but yet, I think it helped me because I did a lot of daydreaming, so I used to dream about good things, and all those dreams came true.
KN: You mentioned you either -- how long, by the way, were these work shifts?
MY: Eight hours.
KN: Eight hours, so you were just packing, just feeding in pineapples. You mentioned you either become a good dreamer, but you also said that you could also become other things. Do you remember what you said to me? You could be a good singer?
MY: Oh, yeah. Or people who sing, love to sing, we have to sing loud and strengthen your voice. Yeah, so there are a lot of good singers from Kapaa from the canneries. But I was a dreamer.
KN: So you were doing this from how old?
MY: I started working in the pineapple field from, was fourteen years old.
KN: What was your job then?
MY: That time picking pineapple, or they called it hoe hana, but basically picking pineapple. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and then later get elevated to work in the cannery.
KN: I've talked with different people who actually worked in the fields and the cannery, did they separate men and women? Because sometimes they said, "Oh, you could meet people in the cannery," the girls I think worked there.
MY: It was separated. The girls worked where, you know, the trimming, (the) guys were in the dirty areas or stacking cases.
KN: So were your sisters, you said you were working, so maybe after school during high school, were your sisters also employed or did they also help out or maybe do some chores around the house? Because both families, both parents were actually working.
MY: Right. So the ones that could work in the cannery started working at the cannery. I remember my sisters, the older ones, worked as waitress. The younger ones, I don't know. I already left for college, so I don't know what they did. [Laughs]
<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.