Densho Digital Repository - Stanley N. Shikuma Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-517-1)

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BY: Today is October 11, 2022. I, Barbara Yasui, I am the interviewer, and Dana Hoshide is the videographer. And our narrator today is Stan Shikuma, and we are recording this interview in the Densho studio in Seattle, Washington. So we're going to go ahead and get started. Can you tell me what is your full name?

SS: Full name is Stanley Nobuo Shikuma.

BY: Okay, and when and where were you born?

SS: I was born on December 2, 1953, in the little town of Brogan, Oregon.

BY: And what generation are you?

SS: I am Sansei, third generation.

BY: Okay. So I understand that you don't know very much about your mother's parents but that you lived near your father's parents when you were growing up. Can you please tell me a little bit about your paternal grandfather and grandmother?

SS: Sure. So Unosuke Shikuma, my grandfather on Dad's side, came from Yamaguchi-ken when he was a teenager, and I believe it was before the turn of the century so like the late 1890s. He came because his uncle had already moved here and was working as a farmer in Watsonville, California, or in that area. And so Grandpa came over and started working with him, starting as a farm laborer, then a sharecropper and eventually, after he had some kids, buying land under their name. My grandmother also came from Yamaguchi-ken, I think they were even somewhat related, like second cousins or something. But from either the same or nearby village, and her name was Haru, and she came around 1906. And I believe it was, she did not have to go through immigration because the earthquake and fire had just happened in San Francisco, and there was no immigration office to check in with, so she just got off the boat and went down to Watsonville.

BY: And you had said that you lived near them when you were growing up, and that you would go over to their house. So can you talk a little bit about things that you remember about them as a child?

SS: Sure. We lived about a mile from what we called Home Ranch. It was the headquarters, the base of operations for Shikuma Brothers Farms. So Grandma and Grandpa lived on the farm at Home Ranch with Uncle Mack and Aunt Hiroko. And we would go there all the time because that's where the farm office was where my dad did the books and the payroll and all the administrative things. And the packing shed was also there where Mom and my aunts would be working, wrapping up raspberries or sorting zucchini or cherry tomatoes. And when I was little... when I was really little, I couldn't help because I was too small. But in that case, we would run over to Grandpa and Grandma's house and watch TV, which was black and white only back then. And I'd sit with Grandpa and we'd watch TV, which was interesting because he spoke very little English and my grandmother spoke no English. So we managed to communicate, I've always kind of wondered how well he enjoyed the TV because it was all, there were no Japanese language stations back then.

BY: So it sounds like although you spent a lot of time with them in their physical presence, you maybe were not able to communicate with them very well.

SS: Correct, yeah. Like almost all the postwar Sansei, we did not learn Japanese. But what we call the prewar Sansei, like my older brother was born in the late '30s, so he spoke a little bit of Japanese, enough to at least do some, like, basic daily conversation with Grandma and Grandpa, as well as my other older cousins. But pretty much all of us born after the war didn't speak anything, so we couldn't communicate with the Issei.