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DG: We're going to start, but we'll start off nice and easy and slow. So if you could just tell me about your family...

ES: Little louder.

DG: Tell me about your family and...

ES: Before the war?

DG: Before the war, like, who was in your family, what did your mom and dad do?

ES: They're all strawberry farmers, and we had to clear the land when we bought, bought the place. And I don't remember until I almost started school about my life, you know, at, at the house there. And all I remember is they had to clear all these land with, with horse, with the horse we had, and dynamite. And they had to clear cut all these trees. [Laughs]

DG: Can you tell me any stories that you remember as a young girl growing up on the farm? What, what sort of things did you do as a young girl?

ES: Oh, most of the time I, I didn't go out in the field very much, I was around the house, and I had to help clean. And my sister was the oldest person so she did most of the cooking, and I remember that she used to take clothes apart, you know, suits and thing, and she used to make clothes for me to wear to school. And as far as, you know, playing, I mean, we just played "kick the can," and we used to just throw the baseball back -- I meant the ball -- back and forth like we're playing baseball. And we had these... oh, I can't think of what else that... oh, I just remembered that when we were strawberry planting, that the... us young ones, they wouldn't let us help with the planting, but they let us put the plants in the hole that they had made, you know, for the, each individual plant. And the, the families used to help each other. I mean, we used to get together with two other families and do all the planting in the springtime, you know, all together. And then we'd go to their farm and do their planting of the strawberries. That's about the extent of how we helped each other. From then on, then we were kinda on our own to take care of the farm. And it was pretty difficult years. I mean, it was very... as far as feeding our family, we had six in our family, and my parents used to raise a lot of vegetables. And we, you know, didn't have... raised our own chicken. And then, too, when we're going, when we started school... you want that part of it, too?

DG: Yes. I'd love... tell me about school.

ES: I think when I was in first grade we were, I was kind of having kind of difficulty as far as my accent, you know, the teacher used to try to correct us on some of the words. But I would think that my feeling would have been hurt when they kept correcting us, but I never had that feeling, I don't know why. I guess the teacher was... did it in a way that she didn't make us feel like we were lower than the rest of the students. And I remember when we were misbehave, the teacher used to tap us with a ruler on our, on our hand. And the classmates, we really enjoyed our classmates. They were all very friendly, and I don't know, somehow we didn't have as many things as they had, like nice clothes and things like that, but I don't know, we just never felt like we were put down. They were just very good to us that way. And I enjoyed going to school because I didn't enjoy working on the farm. [Laughs] And then when school vacation come, we used, we could hardly wait to get back to school again because that was kind of our pleasant outlet of not having to work. And in the summers, we had to all get out there, pick berries from very early in the morning. And I didn't do that much picking because I used to come home and kind of help my sister do some of the cooking and things like that. But somehow during those years, I, I never had the feeling I had to complain. I don't know why, I would think that at that age if I didn't have anything I would complain. But, I guess it just never was in us to... we just accepted what we had and just made do with everything, with the things that we already had. And I used to envy some of the kids at school with their nice clothes and everything. But it's, it's something I just kept to myself and just accepted that fact.

DG: Did you have Caucasian friends that you played with?

ES: Oh, yeah. My neighbors were all Caucasian. Because we were on -- on that part of the island, I think we were, there wasn't too many. Most of them were located on the other parts of the island so we never got together. The only time we used to get together was after the harvest season. We used to have a big picnic. Bainbridge, they call it Bainbridge Picnic, and we all gathered and made a feast and had a big day of it. But... and then we used to have these Japanese movies at the, this hall in Winslow. It's not there, it's not there anymore, but I really don't know where they got the Japanese film, but my parents used to take us all to this Japanese film. But it's always, the kind were very sad and you cried because they were dying and things like that. But I don't know, we just... we went and I don't think we understood a lot of it 'cause it was in Japanese. But we used to be running around there in the dark. [Laughs] The kids used to be playing while our parents are watching.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.