Densho Digital Archive - Isami Nakao - Kazuko Nakao Interview (denshovh-nisami

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DH: This is an interview with Isami and Kazuko Nakao who are more familiarly known to Bainbridge Islanders as Sam and Kay Nakao, and we're interviewing them in their home on Bainbridge Island for the Densho Project, and today is June 18th. Sam, let's start with you, and you were telling me how your family first came to came to America in 1900.

IN: Uh-huh.

DH: Tell me how it happened.

IN: Well, my grandfather liked his sake [Laughs] and he eventually started to lose the family holdings. And my dad, who was the only son, was to be the heir to the whole thing. But seeing that my grandfather was signing notes for, you know, being a good fellow that he was, he signed notes for other people and eventually, well, a good part of the family holdings were being dissipated. And so my dad says well, I can't stand this. I'm going to go to America, land of gold, and so forth and earn enough money and come back to Japan and buy back all the family holdings. Well, my mother said, I'm going to go too -- even if they had two children that they left in Japan in the care of an aunt -- and they came to Tacoma in the year 1900. And eventually they moved over, in the next year, in 1901, they moved over to Bainbridge Island, and they worked in the sawmill. My dad worked in the sawmill. My mother did domestic work for the various people. Walked every morning, walked to the country club, and Point White, they would never think of walking today, but that was what they did in those old days. They walked all the way over there, did a day's work, and then came home and took care of the family.

DH: How far was that?

IN: Well, it's...

DH: How many miles would that have been to walk, from Port Blakely to...

IN: Oh, to Point White, I would say about four miles possibly.

DH: Yeah, such a long way.

IN: But that was the only kind of work available for the older women and so that's what they did. And they lived in the village, Japanese village, the company village, at Port Blakely, and there were numerous families there. And it so happened that there were a number of families from the same village in Japan, and so they were quite comfortable in that they were able to get by without knowing any English, but they got by. And eventually my family, my dad, started to make tofu for the village people and my... being I'm the youngest of eight children, so I didn't have to help with the tofu making, which my sisters did. [Laughs]

DH: So most of Japanese who worked for the Port Blakely mill lived in this community all together in Port Blakely.

IN: That is right. Yeah, they lived in the company home, which was a... the village had a restaurant and a boarding place and a small, the Takayoshi family had a small grocery store and tea house. And they made ice cream and they sold to the various people and that's how they made their living.