<Begin Segment 6>

BK: So, were there, did you have a lot of community events with the few Japanese families that were there?

JT: Not really, it was mostly Christmas and New Year's, oshogatsu for them. And at that time it was still a big event and everybody would travel house to house, just like they would do, I suppose, in Seattle, for instance. And everybody would join in and eat the food, and the men would have a few drinks, if anybody drank, and nobody really drank that much. So, but we'd always visit and wish everybody 'Happy New Year' and go around and eat the food.

BK: And you did have the whole New Year's Japanese spread?

JT: The whole New Year's, yeah, Japanese-style. When we were little, I remember we did that every year. And we had Christmas, they had Christmas trees for us and all that, and there was no such thing as a Buddhist Church or anything like that because the community was so small. Occasionally a minister from, wherever he came from, would come through and talk to them. And they'd arrange -- I don't know if it was Bible study -- but a few meetings with them and then go on. So they did, I'm sure, have some ties to the Buddhist religion and so it didn't make them completely, you know, away from it, didn't take them completely away from it. So they were fortunate in that respect.

BK: So the rest of the people, where did they go to church, the rest of the Japanese?

JT: The rest of the Japanese -- well, if they wanted to go to church, we had the Presbyterian Church, and there was a small Catholic Church, but nobody, they weren't really Catholics. And so, and the other church was the Scandinavian church would be the Lutheran Church where I attended Sunday school classes and catechism classes and things of that nature. But the folks didn't really go to either of those churches, so they just kind of didn't go to church in that way. They would, at New Year's, would put up the traditional omochi kazari and have the little cup of rice on the altar kind of thing although they didn't have an altar, they just put one up, a temporary type. So we did observe those things.

BK: Where did you get the omochi for New Year's Day and all the specialty Japanese foods?

JT: All the specialty foods was from, from Seattle, it was all imported. It had to be ordered and then came up by ship to Petersburg. So a lot of times the mochi would be kind of dry. And I remember when we were little we'd put, they used to put omochi in water to keep it. They'd cut it in squares -- or if they were already in squares but I think they had to cut it -- they would make omochi. And then the other types of supplies, rice and things, were all ordered from North Coast Company, I think here in Seattle. For many years, it was done that way. And I remember my mother made her own... what do you call it? Konnyaku? What is konnyaku anyway? [Laughs]

LH: That's the yam cake.

JT: Yam cake, that's right. I remember them doing that and they told me it was made partially from lye and I couldn't understand how come we're eating that. And I think there is something like that in there, I'm not sure, in the powder. But apparently it wasn't enough to kill you. [Laughs] So all the supplies had to come from Seattle.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.