<Begin Segment 4>

BN: So was your house one of those where lots of people were always coming by?

EO: His business was. So all the bachelors who had no place to go, they'd come over to the store, and they'd spend their time at the store talking to either my dad or my mother, and sometimes they'd eat supper with us.

BN: And the family lived in the same building? Was it one of those above or behind?

EO: Yes, storefront and two story house in the back. And a lot of the bachelors would come over and have supper. And we had a big dining room and a potbelly stove, and my dad would make the room warm by burning wood every night. So it was nice. It was like a social hour every night. [Laughs]

BN: Did your mom then have to cook for all these people?

EO: She cooked for most of them, yeah. Besides, we had roomers upstairs for extra money, and I think she cooked for them, too, they were down there eating. We were all eating together.

BN: And then was she involved in things like Fujinkai or other kinds of activities, or was she just busy with the cooking and...

EO: She was busy. She sewed our clothes, she cooked, she managed the store. Because the market was a neighborhood market, so she took care of customers who came in while my dad was on the road. And then she took care of the books on weekends, she washed and ironed, she had no help. When I think about it, she really worked hard.

BN: Did the children have to also then help with the store?

EO: My brothers helped my father deliver rice and stuff, and my brother still complains that he has a bad back because of the hundred pound sacks of rice that he had to deliver. And then, actually, I had it pretty easy compared to my brothers. And I helped my mother. Sometimes she'd be busy and ask me to cook something, and I'd cook what she showed me how to cook.

[Interruption]

BN: You mentioned before that you played some tennis?

EO: Oh, I loved to play tennis. My father played tennis. He shouldn't have played tennis, he should have been home helping my mother. But on Sundays, there's a place in Gardena... it was actually swampland with two tennis courts, and the Japanese men would go there and play tennis, they loved it. And that's where my dad used to go every Sunday. And my mom, she'd go sometimes, but most of the time she'd stay home and be working. But I loved to play tennis. I used to hit the tennis ball against the garage wall. This is in grammar school. Then junior high school they had tennis courts, so (...) we would play tennis (after school).

BN: You must have been pretty good.

EO: Not bad. [Laughs] I used to enter the Nisei Week tennis tournaments. I once reached the finals, but I lost. So that was good.

BN: That's pretty good.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.