<Begin Segment 6>

TI: And so the location of your farm, I forgot to ask that. Where was the farm located in Bellevue?

TW: It's now 140th NE but it was called Route 2 at the time we were there.

TI: And on 140th, what were some of the cross streets?

TW: Well, now I think it's, is it 116th?

TI: Okay.

TW: Or something like that.

TI: So 140th.

BY: So outside of the downtown area, then it sounds like it was east of the downtown area.

TW: Yes.

TI: And the family, to get around, like to go to the Buddhist church or the community center, how did the family get around?

TW: Well, we had a car and my mom was the driver, so she would drive us into Buddhist church for our Japanese lessons on Saturday. And it was a weird looking car, it's like a van with the back door open. It didn't have a door. And I was sitting there in the back, and I fell off, and I still have a scar under my chin from it. [Laughs] But Mom was the one that drove, and that's how we got around.

TI: Do you remember what kind of car it was?

TW: I have no idea. I know it was black.

TI: And then the back, you said, just kind of opened up?

TW: Yeah, there was no door there. The door was gone.

TI: And so it was just wide open.

TW: But it was like benches alongside the van, and that's where we sat.

TI: And what other vehicles were at the farm? Did you have, like, a tractor and trucks and things like that?

TW: No, we just had Ichi, the black horse.

[Interruption]

TI: So where would the people who slept upstairs, where would they sleep then?

TW: We had three bedrooms upstairs.

TI: Okay. But then I thought during the year, the winter, didn't your other siblings sleep upstairs or were they empty, the bedrooms?

TW: There wasn't anybody up there except for them when they were here, or they were there to work.

TI: And when you say Japanese workers, are these, like, workers from Seattle during the summer?

TW: Yes, in the summertime.

TI: And these were mostly Niseis?

TW: Niseis.

TI: The reason I'm asking, I think my dad used to do that from Seattle. He lived in Seattle and then he talked about, in the summer, going to Bellevue and working on a farm.

TW: Oh, is that right?

TI: He said he wasn't a very good worker so they didn't keep him, but he talked about taking the ferry across and staying there. They would get paid kind of piecemeal based on how much work they would get paid if they paid more or whatever?

TW: I don't have any idea what they got paid.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.