<Begin Segment 3>

DG: Can you tell me more, more... you talked about going to the movies and playing in the yard with your friends. Are there any other things you remember doing for fun as a child?

ES: No, we didn't really get to socialize much with each other. It was just at school and we used to go to Seattle once in a while for shopping together with a friend. But we did all our, most of our shopping through the Sears catalog or the Montgomery catalog, all our school clothes. We really used to look forward to -- after the harvest season -- to order clothes for our school. We will each get maybe two or three items and a new shoe or something like that. We used to really look forward to that. But as far as socializing with each other, no, we didn't. We just socialized with, with our own family, 'cause we really didn't have time to be traveling with a car to see a friend, you know, 'cause that would cost money, too. So it wasn't until getting close to just before the war when everybody was doing better and were able to spend more time and get together and play sometime, go to the friend's house and, and go bike riding. We'd just talk and stay overnight, sometime.

DG: And how much, approximately, how much before the war had your family moved to Bainbridge Island?

ES: Had they what?

DG: Before the war, about how much time went by before they... well, sorry. How, how long had your family lived on Bainbridge Island and farmed on Bainbridge Island before the war?

ES: Well, that was from... oh, I guess I should look in the, my book there. 1914, I think, they were here. That I have to look up on the biography. [Laughs] I didn't bother to look that part up.

DG: And did your parents purchase the land?

ES: No, they were, they had to rent. They were renting at first. And then, like my brother said, through the war years, the owner... we didn't have to pay rent as long as we were in camp, because he knew we couldn't afford to pay rent. And then I think he was saying that... he said something about... oh, this I'll have to look, look up again. I, I was reading through it once, but I can't remember. Something about he... the owner says, "As long as you just pay the interest on the amount you owe us," he would let, let us go for all those years that we were in camp. So he was a wonderful landlord, I mean, he really bent over backwards to, so we wouldn't lose that land. I mean, he could have just taken it from under us, but he didn't. So we were very fortunate we had a landlord like him.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.