<Begin Segment 4>
TI: So what are some childhood memories? Do you have any memories of San Francisco as a kid? You were...
JH: No, not in San Francisco, but in Berryessa, where my dad worked for this Araki Farms, all the other kids were older than I, so they went to the fields with their parents. And I'm a little runt, three years old, all by myself, and you know irrigation is in flumes, I'd strip myself naked and I sat in there and had a good time. And the water's spilling all over because I'm a dam. And the farmer down the line'd come back, he chewed me out. [Laughs]
TI: 'Cause you're stopping the water from the crops.
JH: Yeah. [Laughs] That I remember. And from then, like I say, this (Kiso) Yasunaga said there's an opening in Palo Alto, sharecropping beans and strawberries. See, in culturing pears you plant the pears, but it takes twenty years for the pears to mature and harvest commercially, so in between you have to irrigate and cut the weeds anyway, so you sharecrop beans or whatever, and he made good money there. But my mother got ill, so she was put in this, the JACL building, Issei Memorial --
TI: Just next door, right there?
JH: Yeah.
TI: I see.
JH: Next-next. Next is Mineta's house and --
TI: Right, the next one. Yeah, that's right.
JH: Then he found the gambling house in Sixth Street.
TI: I'm sorry, your father found the gambling house?
JH: Found.
TI: Found, okay. So he, so again, he had a problem with gambling. He loved to gamble.
JH: No, I wouldn't say he was a, not a gambler. Well, he might be, but he didn't lose it all. And he made good money (farming) 'til I started kindergarten, second grade, there was a drought and, from the bay, the salt water intruded into the aquifer and you'd pump it and saltwater kills the pears. So no more, no more sharecropping, so he came to Cupertino on the corner of De Anza and (Mcllelen Road)... well, never mind.
TI: And that's where you and your father lived? Did you live there? 'Cause your mother was in this kind of house nearby, so I guess when your mother was recuperating, or, or...
JH: Well, after she, it took maybe a couple of months for her to get healthy, then she was able to go back to work. So whenever they moved all of us moved. Now, getting back to starting kindergarten, my neighbor, I guess he was about third or fourth grade, he took me and registered me because Isseis are working the field. And he tells me, "This is the toilet and this is your classroom, and this is your teacher." Fine. I don't know yes, I don't know no, I don't know up, I don't know down. And the principal, the kindergarten teacher called the principal, I guess, principal came and they yak, yak, yak. "Jeez, maybe this guy's dumb." And they called this third grade guy again, and he says in Japanese, "Why don't you listen to the teachers?" "Shiran. I don't know nothing." I guess they had patience 'cause I finally acclimated and I didn't flunk kindergarten.
TI: But the problem, or the difficulty was you didn't know any English. You just knew Japanese.
JH: No, nobody spoke English at home, nobody. As a matter of fact, the neighbor's kids, we don't talk English. We talk Japanese. And there's quite a colony.
TI: Well, at school didn't they have experience with other Japanese coming to school not speaking English?
JH: No, I think I was the only one.
TI: Okay.
JH: Because they've had other Japanese students, or Niseis, and they got along.
TI: 'Cause they spoke some English, so they could...
JH: I'm assuming so because the older brother maybe had a problem, but he learned English and it came right on down the line. Or maybe their parents did. My father was fluent in English, but he's out in the field working. He can't... and when it's discipline, Japanese. [Laughs]
TI: Yeah, okay. Good.
<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.