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TI: And you were talking, we talked a little bit earlier, it was really difficult, and it sounds difficult, and yet you said as difficult as it was, the tribe, in allowing them to farm, without that, it would be have been ever harder.

LI: Oh, yeah. Well, they had Caucasian friends and neighbors, but also tribal friends and neighbors. And without the support of their friends, they probably wouldn't have stuck around.

TI: So in terms of the hierarchy in the valley at this time, you had... I guess, where did your family and other Japanese families fit in the hierarchy in terms of the whole valley? When I think of... you had the whites, you have the tribes, you have the Japanese. I mean, talk about that in terms of...

LI: Well, my guess is you had the Caucasian population, and then you had everybody else. I think that the tribal folks and the Japanese and the other immigrant groups probably felt that they were pretty much the same. But it was, the Caucasian population was, just felt that they were above everybody else.

TI: But it sounds like, even though, in terms of the Japanese and tribes, the tribes had the lands, right?

LI: Yes.

TI: And the Japanese didn't have that.

LI: Yeah, but the tribes, they were subsisting on... the rents were not that high. And so they were hunter-gatherers, and so I don't think they were really as money-conscious as other populations, you know. I think they were happy to live the way that they were living. And if everybody left them alone, they would probably still be happy. But they just got along. I think it's respect. The tribal people and the Japanese people, I think, had a lot of mutual respect. And there are stories about my grandpa loaning his .30-30 to my landlords, and they would go to the mountains and they would bring back deer and elk, and they would share it with them. And so don't think that they really felt that they were below or above the tribal people, I think they were just their friends. And they mutually respected each other. And so I don't think... they were all poor, you know. They were all poor. And so when you got poor people, what's the difference between the level of poorness? [Laughs]

TI: So we were in the '20s, it was really hard, then the Depression, late '20s, early '30s hit, I'm guessing it still remained really difficult during those years.

LI: Oh, yeah, very difficult.

TI: And so prewar Inaba family, it sounds like, when you talk about the mobile bunkhouse and things, it was kind of a difficult life.

LI: Oh, it was terrible. Yeah, it was really tough. But yet, the Japanese students excelled in Wapato High School. Education was always important, and my dad and his siblings and the other Japanese children, they would go to regular school during the day, and after school they would go to Japanese school at the Japanese Association building.

TI: And where was the Japanese Association building?

LI: That was right... it was right next to the Buddhist church. And on the other side of the Buddhist church was a Japanese Methodist church.

TI: And this was in Yakima?

LI: This is in Wapato.

TI: Wapato, okay.

LI: Wapato really was the center of the Japanese community, but the Buddhist church was in Wapato and there was a branch of the Buddhist church in Yakima and a branch in Toppenish. And so, but the main Buddhist church was in Wapato, and I believe that was built around 1929.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.