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TI: So in thinking now, as your early childhood memories in, I guess, Sumner, describe your home. What did that look like?

FS: You know, we had a farm on the West Coast highway coming out of Sumner. And it's a typical dairy farm house. But actually, when you look back on it, for its time it was a nice, big house. We had (three) bedrooms upstairs, a bathroom -- another bedroom downstairs, one bathroom upstairs. But before the war, it did not have hot water. We had running water, but not hot water. A very comfortable home, we burned wood in it. The house was good and we had a typical Japanese furo that my dad had built. And the rest of it was... like we had a huge dairy barn that my dad used for his farm equipment and everything. We had apples, cherries, fruit trees, typical.

TI: And with five bedrooms, did you have your own bedroom, did you share it? I mean, it seemed like you had quite a few bedrooms.

FS: No... my two sisters, Bess and Betty had one bedroom, John and Bob had a bedroom, my mom and dad, come to think of it, it must have been just three, yeah, three bedrooms upstairs. And I shared a bed with my sister in the same room as my mom and dad.

TI: Now, when you were a child, describe a typical non-school day. Like a Saturday, would there be chores, what would be the routine for the family?

FS: You know, for us on the farm, soon as we were grown enough, we were expected to work on the farm. Whether it was weeding, thinning crops, whatever it was, picking crops. I worked on the farm all the time as early as I can remember.

TI: How many acres was the farm, how large was it?

FS: Thirty acres.

TI: Oh, wow, that's a large farm. Was that one of the larger farms in that area?

FS: Yeah, I guess so.

TI: So 30 acres. And so tell me about the business. I mean, would the family hire workers to help in the fields and the crops? Where would they sell it, talk about that side.

FS: Okay. My dad used to hire a couple of farm workers, help, and they were Filipinos that immigrated. And he had a cabin where they could live in, slept, and so forth, and they worked on the farm year-round. In fact, some of my fondest memories (are) from this guy, Joe was his name, he always used to treat me so good, you know. And really a nice guy. In fact, one of them actually took over my dad's farm when we moved. At least for a while, and, of course, it was sold, or crops were sold during the war. Anyway, on the farm, he had rhubarb, peas, beans, corn, spinach, strawberries, carrots, cabbage, squash, this goes on and on. It was a typical truck farm. And the interesting thing, Tom, is this: in later years, when I've visited Japan, and I'm seeing these ditches that are (dug) in the fields and all, typically what my dad was doing there in the farm, there in the valley. They carried that, they drained those fields to nurture those crops.

TI: So you saw the same kind of farming techniques that he brought from Japan.

FS: Yeah. And I remember as a kid, my dad would dig those ditches in order for the soil to drain well. And the first time I went to Japan and I went out in the countryside and I saw that, I thought, oh, that's where my dad comes from.

TI: And so as you walked around Sumner, when you walked around, was your father's technique kind of different or unique from the other farms, or did other Japanese do the same thing?

FS: Pretty much so, pretty much the same. Although I think my dad seemed to dig those ditches and drain stuff much more so than the others, at least as I remember as a kid.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.