Densho Digital Repository - Helen T. Sasaki Interview

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Helen T. Sasaki Interview
Narrator: Helen T. Sasaki
Interviewer: Patricia Wakida
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: April 7, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-505-10

<Begin Segment 10>

PW: So what year did you guys move from Linden to Sacramento?

HS: From Linden to Sacramento, I think it was, my brother Steve was born in (1953), I think, and so we would have moved before he was born. So I would say that we probably moved in (1950) or so. I'm just guessing, I need to really go through my bio a little bit more, but I would say around ('50).

PW: And did they sell the farm then?

HS: Yes, he did. Yeah, he did sell the farm to a family, a Japanese American family. And they still have this... and that was way back when, you know, it seems like a hundred years ago, but not quite a hundred. And the same family still owns that cherry walnut orchard, and it ended up becoming cherries and walnuts. And he still has it. In fact, every year, we try to go back Linden and pick cherries from our farm that we lived in. And I haven't gone into the house because that's their own private house now, but it's the same house that we lived in.

PW: So in Sacramento, what was that environment like? Like did you go to the city area?

HS: Yes. When we moved to Sacramento, the reason we moved to Sacramento with my father -- and I don't know the details of it -- but he went to a partnership to buy a theater, a movie theater. And it was a three-way partnership, so my father had one-third of it. And because of that, we moved to Sacramento, but we lived in what we'd call a skid row area. It was not a very nice area. It was, we used to walk by people who were drunk on the sidewalk, but we just got used to it, it'd just kind of walk around them. And that was our, that's how it was when we lived in that area. But my father soon... we only lived there for about a year. And then when my father bought a home that was close to McClatchy High School, close to McClatchy High School. And so I ended up going to McClatchy High School, as did my sisters, and we went on from there. But from the education that we had when we were young, I ended up being the top student in McClatchy High School when I graduated, and so did Florence, I think, and Marge. So we did very well coming off the farm and going to a very good high school.

PW: Delphi was not so bad.

HS: Yeah, right.