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TI: So, we're going to start. And I always start with, kind of, where we are and the date. So today is Friday, February 11, 2022. And we're at the Lakeshore, senior... Lakeshore senior...

VI: It's called Lakeshore Retirement.

TI: Okay, Lakeshore Retirement.

VI: Then they added the assisted living part. So you have two types of people living here. One is a retirement community and others is assisted living type, that needs help. So a lot of the programs that they have here are based on a retirement community. So a lot of the assisted living type of people don't participate, as far as I can see.

TI: Okay, good. And before we go further, I have to introduce you. I think in terms of the documents you sign, Victor Junichi Ikeda. And in the room helping we have Dana Hoshide, who is running the camera, and Barb Yasui, who's helping with the interview. And then I have to introduce myself. And full disclosure, so my name is Tom Ikeda, I'm the executive director of Densho, but I'm also your son, and this is the first formal interview that we've done in the twenty-six years at Densho. So this is exciting to me. And the other thing I wanted to mention is, this isn't going to be a traditional oral history interview because you did one back in 2007, so that's, like, fifteen years ago, with Richard Potashin with the National Park Service. And he interviewed you in Las Vegas at a Minidoka reunion. And so a lot of your life story you already did, and so I'm not going to repeat the same questions. I'm actually going to dive into more detail on just some parts of your story. So it might be, to the viewer, maybe a little choppy in terms of it, but I'll try to provide context as we go on. The other thing I just want to mention briefly is that this is conducted on behalf of Densho and it's been funded by a grant from the OSPI, Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Okay, so that's all the, kind of, the formalities. And for the purposes of the interview, I'm going to just call you Dad, I'm not going to call you Victor or Junks. We'll get into your names later, but I'm just going to call you Dad. So, Dad, I was looking at your previous interview, and also your older sister Hannah's interview. And one of the early -- and this might be some of your earliest childhood memories -- was some time you spent up in Friday Harbor where your parents worked at a salmon cannery. Can you describe that a little bit in terms of what you know about Friday Harbor and why you and your family went up there?

VI: Well, to begin with, the supervisor or the person named Mr. Sawoka, he lived in Friday Harbor, and he was from the same prefecture in Japan as my folks. And that's where we got good friends with my parents. So he had my parents to help find people to do cannery work at Friday Harbor. Friday Harbor for us was someplace that we never thought we'd ever be there, because it was just an island in the middle of Puget Sound. We get there and there was really nothing at Friday Harbor. There was a dock where, if I remember, the ferry dock, and then, a couple of blocks down was the cannery pier where the cannery was on. And above that place they had living quarters. They had living quarters like for my parents because we had kids, but they had, I think, barracks type for the cannery workers. The cannery operated, I think, if I remember, every other year. Because the sockeye salmon only run every other year, the big runs. The other years, they don't run that much, so whether they opened the cannery or not, we don't know. But with the sockeyes running, they want all the help they can get. Not only our family was there, but... now I forget their name. Yorita family, because I met George Yorita, who was about my age, when we were at Friday Harbor.

TI: I'm curious, when you mentioned, like that family Yorita, was that family also from the same prefecture?

VI: No.

TI: But it's interesting when you were saying earlier how your dad essentially, because of the same prefecture, which I'm thinking of our family history, so that would be Kagawa?

VI: Kagawa-ken.

TI: Kagawa-ken. And that's on the island of, near Takamatsu, that area there.

VI: See, what happens is when people come from Japan, they feel much more comfortable with people from the same ken. And as far as Kagawa-ken was concerned...

TI: It was tiny, right? I mean, in terms of the number of people here from Kagawa-ken was really small.

VI: Very small. The Tsuboi family and we had about three or four different families, but that was it. So he became very close to the people from the old ken. Even when we went to California, we would stop in and visit somebody that came from the same ken as my parents.

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