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DG: All right, so we're going to move forward again to... now the war has ended and the camps are closing, can you tell me what you remember about how your family, what your family did after the war ended and how they got back to Bainbridge?

ES: You mean in camp, while we were in camp?

DG: Yeah. While you were in camp and the war ends, what happened then?

ES: Well, I think they were saying that they heard news that we can go back, and they said that they wanted to go back to the farm. And so, I think -- oh, I know, my younger brother said he did not want to go back to strawberry farming. And, 'cause he didn't like that back-breaking work. So he wanted to go to where my sister was living in Eastern Oregon, and do potato farming, that type of farming was machinery equipment. And then Ak was in the service then, and Tosh was in the service, so it was just myself and my mother and father that went back. 'Cause my mother -- my sister was already married, she married during the war. So she said that they wanted to go back because they still owned the farm. And I kind of remember, 'cause my girlfriend said they were gonna go back to live in the city and that's where I would have liked to live is in the city, 'cause I was tired of country. I get tired of country living, I thought, "Oh, they have more fun out in the city," but I had to go back with them. And then... so when we went back there, there was nothing there, hardly, nothing there in the house. I mean, it was very... I think the only thing that was there was the stove. And we didn't have running toilets or anything either. I think we put that in later, as far as... I was wondering if we still had the furo then. No, I think they, they took that out, because the family that lived there never used it anyway. But there was nothing there, there was hardly nothing there. And that was, it was kind of depressing. I mean, we just had to start from scratch, I mean, there was, you know... but, it's funny, I didn't remember complaining then either. We just accepted that we had to do it, so we just forged ahead and got the farm going and weeding it and getting the farm back to, to plant strawberries and stuff like that. I don't know how we did it, really. [Laughs] I didn't know where they got the money even. They had to borrow all this money to, to buy all this stuff, but they did it, I don't know. I can't remember whether we, whether we even had a car at that time. And then in the meantime, finally when we were getting started, then my older brother came back from the service.

[Interruption]

DG: So let's go back to talking about after the war and you and your parents had returned and shortly then, your brother came back. I think this was Akio?

ES: Well, Ish was back there too, come to think of it. The other of the two.

DG: Okay, can you tell me what, how your brothers started working on the farm and ...

ES: Well, Ish was working on the farm but then he wanted to go do some truck farming. So he started that, but it wasn't very successful. He'd take our vegetables and sell it, go to the different homes and sell it. But he wasn't very successful. And so eventually he went out to Auburn to start his own farm because... let me see, what was it... oh, 'cause there wasn't enough business for both, all of us to be farming on the one land there, in order to survive, to make money. So he, he moved over there. And then my brother continued. Oh, and then my other brother came back and did it for a while, too, Tosh. He was in the service. But he came back and did it for a while, and then he got married, so he left the farm. So just, so it was just my older brother, my parents, and myself. And so after I graduated, then I... I didn't want to stay on the farm, so I... I mean, I stayed home, but then I went to business school for a while, then I went to the technical college to study shorthand and English and all that jazz. And then I went to work and I commuted for a while, and then eventually I started rooming with two of the 7-Ups girls in an apartment, so all three of us were working. And I used to come home on the weekends to help my mother because she still had to do a lot of washing and things like that. I knew it was very hard on her 'cause she's still working on the farm. And so I used to come home on the weekends and help her do that. And then, yeah, and then through the years they started doing better, and my father finally retired. And then, but my mother continued working, and they raised strawberries and what was it, raspberries and corn, especially corn, and she was, she was very busy all during her time working on the farm there. But she seemed to enjoy it and she stayed healthy that way. Although the one, one time she, she was pretty sick there for a while and then we thought we almost lost her. But this is a great doctor, he just brought her back to good health and she lived to be about eighty, what is it, eighty-six or something. So she did pretty good, and she stayed in the nursing home only about a month and she passed away. But she was... she led a good, active life.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.