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TI: Going back to the farm in Milwaukie, can you just describe the family home? What did that look like and what was in there?

SI: I don't know how many acres it was. As a kid, I don't ask those questions. But we had a pretty good farm because we were farming together with my father's brother, the Kuribayashi. And my father was adopted, so I told you he was Fujita, although they were brothers. And he had two children, boys, I think mostly boys. I think two and then one coming back from Japan when he was older. And I know he used to go to the market, otherwise I think the brother, his older brother, my father's older brother used to go until my cousin would come back from japan and he would go when he was old enough. Because I think he was older when he came back, so he did the marketing for his dad.

TI: Okay. But the farm was, sounds fairly large. Seems like the two brothers worked together?

SI: Yeah, they did.

TI: To do that?

SI: Yes, we had greenhouses, and they were glass greenhouses, you know, not plastic. They were quite, it was a pretty good farm. We had a big barn where we'd sort the celery and things that we sold. They would cut it and then we'd come home from school and we'd have to do the root part, make a thing like that, make a straight, I mean, clean it up, make it... and then we have a box, and then we had a paper. Whoever we were selling to, we had to put one in, and then you know how you have to wrap it up, then put it in, line it up in this crate.

TI: So you individually wrapped the, each celery stalk?

SI: Yeah, I think so. I think that's what we did.

TI: And then they would sell it at the farmer's market?

SI: Yeah, when they went to the market.

TI: I guess that would make sense. Because at a farmer's market, people are just buying one or two, and it's wrapped like that, it's probably more desirable.

SI: Yeah, this is a market where the buyers buy quantities because we have a whole truckload. See, he used to take over a truckload.

TI: And so you were kind of like, you and your sister were like, you had two older siblings. So it was a family operation, then after school or something you would...

SI: Yeah, we had to help them. Then when we plant, because we plant like our celery roots or whatever we had to plant. When it's ready, we'd help them and maybe water, hold the hose for them and then they would put the water in the hose so when they plant it, we'd help them whenever we can.

TI: And you're just out in the fields doing this?

SI: Yeah, in the field, uh-huh.

TI: Other than celery, were there other crops?

SI: I think we had strawberries. We had a field down below where there's a railroad track. And then we had so many acres up there, and then we had to many acres up there. We had strawberries up there, and we must have planted other things later, cabbage and stuff, peppers and stuff like that. But I don't remember too much about that, the crops that we raised.

TI: And were there certain times of year where you had workers or helpers?

SI: Yes. We had workers to help. Because I think cauliflower. I think cauliflower you had to wrap something up and tie it. I remember something like that, the workers were doing it, but we did have to have our workers to help.

TI: And generally how many workers do you...

SI: I really don't know how many, but I know we had workers.

TI: And who were these workers? Do you remember where they came from, how long they were there?

SI: Let's see, I'm trying to remember. I can't tell, I don't really know where they came from.

TI: Up in Seattle, when I was a kid, there were strawberry farms up around Seattle.

SI: Well, the strawberries, the kids are out of school.

TI: Well, that's what I did, I remember picking strawberries.

SI: Yeah, they would come and do the strawberries. Yeah, the Japanese younger people who are out of school. I remember we had a house that they would live in.

TI: So these were Japanese?

SI: These Japanese people from...

TI: Portland?

SI:  Portland, yeah.

TI: And they were, like, teenagers or were they older?

SI: No, they were, I think, maybe they might have been in their late teens or early twenties.

TI: Yeah, what we did up there, I mean, they had this old school bus that would kind of go through the neighborhood and pick us up at five o'clock in the morning and we'd go pick strawberries and come back. So they would do that in Seattle. There were some strawberries at Bainbridge Island.

SI: We had another house besides the one for the young people. We had another house, a family. I'm trying to remember their names but I can't... I know that she was there because her mother and her father worked in the sawmill, but the mother and this girl that I know, they were friends of my oldest sister, the girl was. And so her mother and her, they lived in that house. But the father was, he was in, he was working in a sawmill somewhere. But I don't know, we had other people come, other people would come to pick, you know.

TI: Were there other Japanese American farms in the Milwaukie area?

SI: Yeah, there were farms. The Watanabes and who else? I'm trying to see who my neighbors were, what was their names? This one boy is still living, I don't know about now. But they only had about three acres and we had a bigger farm next to 'em.

TI: So your farm was one of the larger...

SI: It was leased land, you know, the house and everything was leased.

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