Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Rick Sato Interview
Narrator: Rick Sato
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 2, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-srick-01-0015

<Begin Segment 15>

AI: So then 1946 came, and the war ended, and then what happened to you?

RS: I... I got discharged latter part of that 1946, and then I went to -- I think I went to Idaho and worked a little bit longer, then my family decided to move back to Wapato. So they moved back and started farming and I came back and joined them.

AI: Now tell me what happened when you came back to Wapato.

RS: Well, one disappointment I had, is I had a discharge, I just got discharged and I wanted to go get a haircut there, and they said, "We don't cut Japs' hair." And that was the worst feeling for me all that time.

AI: That must have felt terrible.

RS: Yeah that felt really terrible. I mean, I thought, "What did I go into the service for?" But, you, you're going to find people like that, even now you're going to find people like that. [Laughs]

AI: So when you first came back, that was very unpleasant. But you settled back in with your family there?

RS: And, the Caucasian people, I mean, again, there's prejudice all the time, but it wasn't too bad at that time. After I came back, and that was 1946, it wasn't too bad.

AI: And what about from the Indian, the Yakima Indian people, feel any increase in prejudice from them?

RS: No, the Indian people still I've heard, again they rather lease to Japanese than Caucasian people. And I've heard that many times again when I came back. So I felt pretty good about that.

AI: So as a family then, were you able to pretty much start up a similar kind of farming operation after the war?

RS: Yes, because -- well, we were doing things by horse, so there wasn't too many expense except for the lease of the land and the, and your labor. So that's, they got started and then gradually we bought our own land. And at that time, Issei people couldn't buy no land in their name. So I don't know what year they changed that, but it did change later on that Isseis could buy land.

AI: So before that time, then the land had to be in the name of you or one of your brothers or sister.

RS: Yeah, at that time, even when you leased the land, we leased it in our name because we were U.S. citizens. And if you wanted to buy, well they put it into our name because of that.

AI: Well, let's see then, so you had come back to the area, did you see much change in the Yakima valley since that time you had been gone? Were there many changes or did it look pretty much look the same?

RS: Well, I think -- as far as the Yakima valley was concerned it was about the same thing. The same kind of crops, they had orchard there, but basically they had the same kind of crop. Yeah. And after we came back, the hakujin don't do this crop, the truck croppings. So usually -- most of the Japanese that came back and done it, also the Filipino people.

AI: About... And when you think about all the Japanese families that had been there before the war, about how many of them do you think came back, after?

RS: Well I'm going to say about fifteen families came back after the war and started farming again.

AI: So it sounds like maybe about half of them?

RS: About half of us say, came back and started farming, because the younger generation all went to city type of work, Chicago, New York and California. So in fact you don't see too many younger kids doing that kind of hard labor for nothing. [Laughs]

AI: So when you came back then, it wasn't quite the same kind of Japanese community as before the war.

RS: No, unless their folks came back with them, then they had, they got their own ways from way back; or so it was about the same. But right now, I don't think there's hardly any Sanseis or even Niseis doing that kind of work, because that involves a lot of hard work and no income, or low income. [Laughs]

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.