<Begin Segment 13>

DG: Did you personally come back to check on your land, that you had leased, and look or...

TK: Yeah, I did come back. I didn't... I was leasing it, and soon as that berry crop was over that year, which was '41, and there was nothing there, so there was nothing to come back to. And I wasn't, I wasn't gonna go back to farming 'cause I had trained as a mechanic and a body man. But I didn't get into body but I went as a mechanic and worked at Seventh Avenue Service. So, that was out. Just, I became a mechanic and I had my own shop on Yesler, and that's it. Whole life...

DG: And tell me what happened with all of your furniture and your farming equipment.

TK: I don't know what happened. It just disappeared, there was nothing, nothing there. There was nothing there. I'd always... I asked Tony Bucset, he said, "I don't know," and Maude Beaton says, "I don't know." So, what can you do? You don't know what happened to it. And I can't even remember what all the things that I had. There was a lotta tools there, that's all I remember. And horse tools, harnesses for the horse, That's all gone. I didn't come back to Bainbridge, there was nothin' for me to come back to. Well, I, I had a job in Seattle and I worked for Seventh Avenue Service as a mechanic, and then I opened my own shop and that was the rest of my life.

DG: Now, how did that feel to... did you know that you had lost everything?

TK: Well, at my age, it didn't make any difference. I didn't want to be a farmer, so it didn't, didn't matter. I musta lost something. If it was an older person, yes, he might have said, "Oh, God, I had a lotta tools and it was worth that much." Even the horse that I, I killed was worth something if you had to buy it. Then it was about two three hundred dollars to buy a horse. And we had to kill it and he was all gone and it's not there. I'd have to, if I was gonna farm, I'd have to buy another horse or a tractor. I don't know if I had that kind of money. [Laughs]

DG: Do you remember your father, what he was like and what he was going through at the time?

TK: No, he was a, we were... I was on Columbian Way and he was retired by then, and he didn't work. And I had my own... yeah, I was workin' at Seventh Avenue Service and then I started my own shop on Yesler and I didn't have too much communication with him. I didn't speak Japanese too well and he didn't speak English, so, and when you don't communicate too well... so we just didn't talk. In fact, in fact, I went to Japan and his sister or his brother was saying, "Your dad said you don't even say anything." No, I don't, I don't say nothing. Even my mother-in-law, my wife's, says, "He don't even say anything. He doesn't say hi in the morning or goodbye." [Laughs] I was one of those that didn't say much at all... nothing. When I shut my mouth, it was closed.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.