<Begin Segment 5>

AI: Well, now, I think you had mentioned to me that around age nine or ten that your family moved?

RT: Yes, we...

AI: What happened?

RT: Well, there was a family that lived up north -- not north, up above Midlakes. I really am not sure about the direction, but above Midlakes. And I think they wanted to go back to Japan -- there were two brothers, the Mashiyamas, and they wanted to sell their farm. And I guess my father had enough to buy this farm, and that means that we moved from where we had all lived together as an extended family. And that was in, I guess it was about '37. And, it wasn't far because after all, the community was quite small, but nevertheless, we did live in a separate house that... we lived far enough away that we had to, we could walk, but it was a little hike to walk down to our grandma's house. That house, they added on a living room, and it was quite a nice house, because when they added on the living room, they also added an upstairs portion, which was, oh, comparable to... almost a loft I suppose you could say, but it was very roomy and it was used for sleeping. It was a bedroom, basically. And as I say, I think that it was a, quite a nice addition that they put onto the house, and it certainly gave us a lot more room. Yeah, we really could spread out.

AI: Now, how did things change for you and your responsibilities and your roles when you moved to this house of your own with your family?

RT: Well, I was old enough then -- as I say I was, like, ten, and when we moved, then of course, no longer do we have the aunties for support. We didn't have somebody that did the cooking for us, and took care of us. By that time, they thought that I should learn to cook, because my mother did most of the running of the farm since my father was working in the packing house. And so everybody had to struggle through my cooking. We had a wood fire, wood stove, and of course, you have to start the rice early enough so it'll be cooked by noon; and many, many times I would not get it started, and everybody would have to be sitting there eating this half-raw rice. [Laughs] I know, I remember that one of the first things I learned to cook was fried cabbage, and that was a learning experience for everybody. We all had to suffer through my attempts at cooking. And my sister was born, and since there are eleven years that separate us, and so I was the so-called babysitter, and that was part of my job. To take care of her and, sort of make sure that she was okay. She had pretty much free rein and she took it, so you really had to keep an eye out for her because she'd be wandering around.

But yes, indeed, my responsibilities did change. And they never, my parents, never once assumed that I couldn't do it. This was your job and this is what you have to do. My brothers, who were -- by this time I would say I was around eleven, so Tats was, like, ten, and he was running the business. I mean, he would run the tractor at ten and he was very good. He and Ty would, when they had strawberry pickers, they would take care of the business of keeping track of how many trays the pickers picked, etcetera. They were in charge out there. So we learned early on. And one of the things is that, we never questioned that this is something that we couldn't, or shouldn't, so of course we did. And I think this carried out all the way through, and especially when we went to Montana, it was already there.

AI: So it was really a family operation. You all had your own responsibilities and jobs.

RT: Absolutely, yes.

AI: Now, as you were growing up about this age, do you recall your parents, your mother or your father, ever having kind of a discussion with you or talking about such things as prejudice, or discrimination, or giving you any kinds of lessons, or understanding, about your situation in the larger community? Anything like that?

RT: They weren't much for, let's say, sitting down and discussing this kind of thing. I think they knew that we would face it, and they also knew that we would handle it. I'm pretty sure that that was the way it was. I don't believe that we ever had anything very outwardly evil as far as prejudice; however, we knew it was there. I think that as a minority, you become sensitized to folks who speak ill and of course, there are always those who like to point out the differences, shall we say. But, I don't know that they made a big thing of it, and I think in a way that was because, like my mother especially, she grew up in that community. She knew these people, and of course, she herself knew that there was such a thing as prejudice. But I don't think that they ever emphasized it. They never stressed it. They assumed that we would able to cope with it. And so they never sat us down to tell us that, "This is what you're going to face." No, we just faced it when it did come up.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.