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AI: Well, let me back up a little bit and ask you, do you remember the trip coming back to the U.S.?

CN: No, I don't, not at all. I understand it was terrible. And it was, I know this because it's stamped on my birth certificate -- we came back on the SS Thomas Jefferson. And so it was... I thought it was one of the Japanese ships, but it was not. And that must have been hard on my mother, too, because I think we must have eaten bread instead of rice and that kind of thing.

AI: Right. And then when you arrived back, where, where did you live when you first came back here?

CN: In Bellevue. It was in an area which is now part of the Glendale Golf Course, and there were a number of Japanese who, Japanese families who farmed there.

AI: Off of Northeast Eighth?

CN: Yeah. The soil was terrible. I remember our parents breaking up these lumps of clay, clay soil I should say. And I remember that very vividly.

AI: Can you describe a little bit more about what that home was like, what that property was like?

CN: Yeah. It was a house that had a large kitchen and a dining, I guess it's a dining room, and then a living room, or we called it the parlor, and then one bedroom. And my parents slept in the double bed, and I slept in the single bed off to one side.

AI: And was that right on the farm acreage? The house was right there next to the field?

CN: Uh-huh. And the other thing I remember very vividly is that the well was -- you know, you pumped the water to get the well -- I mean, to get the water -- and our well was very special because we had a trout living in there. And it was a good-sized one, and someone -- I think the family's name was Koura who moved to Bainbridge Island, but I think... I was told now that their son had caught this fish and put it in the well. But it was fascinating. We used to spend what seemed like hours -- I'm sure it wasn't hours -- leaning over the well with everyone saying, "Get away. Get away. You'll be falling in." And we were watching this fish swim around. Those wells were not all that large, but we, for all I know -- well, I'm sure he's no longer living there, but he lived to be a ripe old age. [Laughs]

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