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TI: Let's talk a little bit about your father. What was your father's name?
JH: Hayakawa Kaso, K-A-S-O.
TI: And where was he from?
JH: Fukuoka. You don't want to give the village, do you?
TI: If you know it.
JH: Yeah, Munakata-gun. Mu, M-U, na, N-A-K-A-T-A, gun. (...) I mean, Fukuoka ken, (prefecture), Munakata-gun village. That's enough.
TI: And what did your father's family do in Japan?
JH: They were wealthy farmers.
TI: So they owned quite a bit of land?
JH: Yeah, they had sharecroppers and the whole thing, 'til World War II, yes.
TI: Well, so why did your father come to America?
JH: He was a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, and when he got, not expelled, discharged he goes, he's a third, of the three brothers, youngest, he goes to his elders and says, "I want to go to Hawaii." And the elder says, "Yeah, you can go. But the ladies of the house have to hull the rice to make it white." His sister-in-law gave him a dirty look. [Laughs] They said, "We got to do extra work." Well anyway, he got passage with the hulled rice and then went to the port of Nagasaki. That was a deep water port way back in 1906, yeah, 1906. Because Tokyo and Yokohama were still primitive. The, Nagasaki was, the European trade, they'd come that way, Dutch and whatever.
TI: So he left in 1906, and where did he land in the United States?
JH: Well, the story is he went to Nagasaki. Naturally, you go ahead of time to get your papers straightened out and wait for the ship to come, and he met a man from another prefecture, Kurume -- well that's, you don't have to write it down -- his name was Omori. Now, down the road there's a connection. Well, he said, "Where you from?" Babababa. "So where you going?" "Honolulu." "I'm going to Honolulu too." So he says, "Let's be shipmates." So they got to Honolulu and they got a job in the lumber mill, sawing coconut logs into timber. And after two weeks of that Mr. Omori says, "Too hot, too physical labor. Let's go to San Francisco." And my dad says, "My sister-in-law gave me just enough money for Honolulu." So Mr. Omori says, "I'll loan you the money." So they came to San Francisco, and Mr. Omori went south county -- in other words, Coyote, Morgan Hill -- and my dad stayed in San Francisco. Because there was a demand in Alaska fish cannery, says you don't have to know anything, they'll teach you, so he went and he got the job of, in those days after the canned salmon comes out of the steamer you plug the hole with a dip of solder. That's what he was doing. Made good money, but he learned how to gamble, so he came back broke. [Laughs] So his distant relative in San Francisco said that, "You better go learn English." So this Methodist church had a Japanese-English class, and he became pretty proficient at it.
TI: He was in San Francisco 1906. Was he here during the earthquake?
JH: The earthquake was in April and he came in October.
TI: Okay, so after, afterwards.
JH: Yeah, after.
TI: Did he ever talk about what he saw? Was there still, like remnants --
JH: Wait, is it 1906 or 1903? Do you, well you're not a California?
TI: No, I'm, I think it was 1906, isn't it, the earthquake?
JH: '06? Well, you can correct it later. [Laughs]
TI: Yeah, so maybe it was after, but he came after.
JH: Let's see, I don't think it, I can make it in sequence, but he learned English and then came to San Jose. There was a wealthy Fukuoka ken -- you know that the ken has a chain. There's one leader. Says, "I'm looking for a job," and then this Mr. Yasunaga, where Fuji Tower is now -- he used to own a trucking outfit, haul produce to San Francisco and Oakland -- "Yeah, there's an opening in the Gallagher Fruit Company on North San Jose. There's a lot of Fukuoka ken there." So he went, he worked there, I think about seven years. He's a good teamster. And he learned how to graft trees and so forth and so on.
TI: When you say he was a good teamster, you mean like a, was he a union person teamster?
JH: In those days you hitched a horse onto a buggy or a cart or a wagon. Well, on the wagon, then you haul fruit. And then if you have to plow in between the trees, then you plow.
TI: And that was called a teamster. That was the...
JH: Well, the modern terminology is teamster. It reverts back to driving horses, then the truck drivers became teamsters.
TI: Okay. I didn't know that. That's interesting.
JH: Let's see, smoke eater is a fireman, and... yeah, smoke eater is a fireman. Cat skinner is a Caterpillar driver, and, well, I can't think -- getting old now. [Laughs]
TI: No, that's good.
<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.