<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Going back to the house that your dad built with the help of his church friends, describe the house. How many bedrooms, and how was it, what did it look like?

CH: Well, from the back entrance, there was a screened porch, and then it had one of those floor, cellar door that had a step down into the basement. That's where my mother kept all of her canned foods down there in the cool place. And then we also had an opening on the outside, on the lower, which was another part that was not cemented. It was just a door opening, and all I saw was just a dirt floor. But that's where my dad had about three or four, a shoyu keg of tsukemono with a rock on it. And that's how we ate during the Depression and during the wintertime, we had tsukemono, daikon and nappa and nasubi and everything else salted down.

TI: So especially in the wintertime when the crops weren't coming out, you would have rice?

CH: Rice and chicken. We had a chicken house. My mother had eggs, you know, we always had eggs. We always had eggs, there was no problem having eggs to eat. We had chicken for Sunday dinner.

TI: So go back to the house, tell me more about the house. You told me about the basement.

CH: House was, okay, the back entrance there was a screened porch, and then the kitchen. And there's this, you know, a sink, and the window, sink, and there was a wood stove. And then at first it was a wood stove, but then later on I think not too much later, they had a gas stove, one of those tank, gas tank, and they piped it in.

TI: Kind of like a propane?

CH: Propane tank, yeah, outside. Or out there in the garden. But the wood stove, that was for heat, and so California is still quite cool in the mornings, and I remember us kids would get up and my mother would have the wood stove going, we'd open the oven and turn our backs and put our nightgown on and heat our back and warm ourselves up and we could put our clothes on. Because there was no heat in the house except for that wood stove, and the kitchen was always warm. And then, so then that was the kitchen.

And then the parlor, then we had a parlor, and it was just a davenport, overstuffed chair and a davenport. What else did we have? My dad had a fireplace, no, I take it back. The living room was just one open room, and it was just a, yeah, davenport, and a rocking chair. I think we had an overstuffed chair in there. But no dining room table yet. And then there was a bedroom right next to that, and that's where I think my sister and I slept on a double bed there. And then there was another... and the kitchen was here and then there was another room here, and I think my... no, I take it back. My parents slept in that room and my sister and I slept in this other room next to the kitchen. And my brother was still a baby yet, so he was sleeping with the mother and father, and there was only just the two bedroom, kitchen, and the living room. And then as the family grew, then we got older, my dad added on a living room and another bedroom. So the boys got the father's and mother's room, and let's see, how was that? Oh, and then they also ended on a bedroom in the back of the house for Mother and Dad, and then us girls had the front room and the boys in the middle, that was it. And then that little room next to the kitchen got to be the junk room. [Laughs] Junk room, we called that junk room because everything went in there during the war, when the war broke out and we had to move out, that was the room that we locked up with all our... well, things that we couldn't, we only was able to carry a suitcase.

TI: Oh, so now you're talking about the wartime where you would store those.

CH: Yeah.

TI: Okay, we'll get to that later.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.