<Begin Segment 3>

TI: When you think about your earliest memories, can you remember the home that you kind of first lived in and what that was like, the house?

MT: It was really just kind of a shack, you know. I couldn't even hardly say it was a house, they just refurbished the inside to make it into different rooms. But it was really just... I don't know. [Laughs]

TI: So when you say different rooms, so how many rooms were there? Like how many bedrooms?

MT: Well, you know, actually, we just had one large room that was kind of portioned off, partitioned off, so that, where they put the beds. But literally it was like living in, sleeping in one big room.

TI: And in that big room, did they have an area to eat, like a kitchen area and things like that?

MT: Well, no, the kitchen was separate from the bedrooms, but the rest of the house was, well, if I had to put it into words, it was kind of like a living area and then dining, and then they had a kitchen and then the bedrooms.

TI: Okay, but one bedroom, just one big...

MT: More or less, yes, it was quite a large room.

TI: And when you say "shack," did it have things like running water?

MT: Oh, yes, we did have running water.

TI: How about indoor plumbing for, like, a bathroom?

MT: No. We had a Japanese bath, and the toilet was outdoors.

TI: So like an outhouse?

MT: Outhouse, yes.

TI: And what kind of farming did your family do?

MT: Well, they called it truck farming, you know, growing vegetables for the market. And I don't know how many acres he had, acreage. Their property was all in one, but there were six families that they divided the property and they were each working their own area, growing crops. But mainly it was all market crops. My father used to take it to the market first thing in the morning.

TI: And when you say the market, was this down in Seattle?

MT: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: So like the Pike Place Market?

MT: Sort of, yeah, I don't know if it was Pike Place, but it was a market where the farmers would take their vegetables. I don't think... he didn't stay there to sell it like Pike Place now, so they must have had another market where it was...

TI: Yeah, there was another street, I think it was like Western Avenue where you would, the farmers would, I guess, sell to wholesalers there and then they would then distribute it to the stalls.

MT: Uh-huh, I think that was...

TI: But every morning he would do that.

MT: Yes.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.