<Begin Segment 4>

DH: I know that your father came to make a lot of money, and I think as many immigrants found, there wasn't as much money to be made here as they had first thought. Did they ever speak of the hardship of not finding gold growing on trees and all that sort of thing?

IN: No. It was, if I understood the question...

DH: Did they find life here hard?

IN: Pardon?

DH: Did they find life here hard compared to Japan?

IN: Well, I guess I was too young to realize that life wasn't all that great 'cause everybody else was in the same boat. And no, it was not the easiest thing in the world, but we made out. And like, when my siblings were older than myself so they went to school, and when they first went to school, they didn't know any English at all. They spoke only Japanese, but when my turn came, my older brother and sisters were speaking somewhat more English and then so school was not that difficult for me.

DH: And then later -- do you need to take a break? Sam, are you all right?

IN: I'm fine. It's all right. You'll have to speak slow. [Laughs]

DH: So you said you pretty much enjoyed your life. It was a comfortable life for children then in Port Blakely in the Japanese village.

IN: Well, my recollection of Port Blakely was a happy one. We used to go to the beaches and we used to go fishing and gather nori and clams and so forth. So no, it was a fun place to live as far as I was concerned.

DH: And then later after the mill shut down, you moved to Seattle for a while, and then you came back and started making a transition. Can you explain the transition to farming, how your father decided to become a farmer.

IN: Yeah well, my dad was one of the last ones to leave the village because he helped tear down the mill, and then he went to work at various sawmills around the State of Washington like Selleck and Eatonville and so forth, but he decided about 1926 that that was not the life he wanted to live. And so he said well, I'm going to go back to Bainbridge and start farming strawberries. And although he had no experience as a strawberry farmer, he, but his background was farming so it was not that difficult. All you needed in those days to get started was, all you had to have a horse and cultivator and you were in business. [Laughs] And so they leased the land in my older brother's name because my dad was not eligible to lease land because the law, alien land law, prohibited him from doing so, so it was done in my older brother's name. So that's how we came back to Bainbridge. But it was fortunate that the very first crop that we harvested was very good, and so we were able to sort of get out, get out of debt and be on our own again.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.