<Begin Segment 13>

JN: Going back a little, can you tell us a little bit about your parents, how they valued education? Your mom managed to figure out a way to send you to college. Like growing up, did you get any messages?

LK: I don't remember any overt things, other than, I remember... well, see, my mother's story is unusual 'cause she was born in Seattle. And her, her parents, her mother was only eighteen when she was born, and her father was here from Japan to make his fortune and take it back. Make his fortune in America and go back to Japan. And so when, when her mother was pregnant with my mom, then they decided they're gonna... that they had -- and she was working, too, and that she had to keep working. And so my mother was just a few months old, I don't remember how old she was, but they sent her back to Japan on the ship with two bachelor men who were going back to Japan, and they sent her back to stay with her uncle in Japan. And she didn't get to come back to America 'til she was thirteen. And while she was in... so then she was raised... actually, the only parents she knew was her aunt and uncle in Japan, and he happened to be the principal of this school, a grade school in Japan. And she loved school and she said she really got top grades in her, in her... but she was ostracized by her classmates because they said, "Oh, you just did well because your father is, I mean, your uncle is the principal." And so, but anyways, so then she had to leave Japan and came back to America. There's a whole big story involved about how that evolved, but anyway, she came back here and by then, my, there were, she had four sisters who were born, meanwhile. And, and so they, she came back to the island because by then my grandparents had moved to the island. He moved here to work at the Port Blakely Mill and then from there became a farmer, and, and bought this house.

Anyway, when she came back to America, she was twelve or thirteen, she went to the sixth -- twelve, I think -- she went through the sixth grade and then her parents said, "Okay, that's enough school. You have to help on the farm." And so they made her quit school, and so she just begrudged them that something fierce. And so when I said I wanted to go and my father said, "We can't afford to pay tuition for Lilly, we have to save it for Frank," then that's when my mother's dander got up and that's when she said, "Okay, I'll make some money so she could go," and that's how it evolved. But she always, I mean, we all, somehow we knew we had to do well in school. I don't remember anybody ever telling us that or giving lectures, but there was that old story about, I mean, we have to represent the family well, and the community well, etcetera, etcetera. So anyway, that's. So... and so then because of that, both Frank and I worked summers on the... doing with the raspberries, helping, and that's when I cooked for the workers. I was here... yeah, I cooked for, all of my parents' friends in Seattle sent their children over here to get the farm experience, so they were staying here and I was cookin' for 'em.

JN: So how many people were, at that time, how many people were here?

LK: Well, it went clear into when, after I got married and had children, and so I'd be here with my three kids. And there'd be six or seven young teenagers here at a time. And then I also got up in the morning to go pick up the pickers or the women who came to help pick. And then the different pickers stayed at the different cabins at the other farms, and so I would go and pick them up in the truck and then in the evening I... well, by then, I think, oh, by then Frank was in college. And... I don't know why, he worked too, but there were times... well, by the time he was in practice... I did this clear until after Frank was out of school and had his dental practice and I was coming here on, during the summertime and I was delivering the berries in the evening to the market, to the wholesale markets in Seattle. And then I'd come home and get up at five, my mother would wake me up, even as an adult. I remember her saying, "It's time to wake up, Lilly." And I'd say, "Oh, no." It's six o'clock in the morning and I'd have to get up. Anyway, I learned as a teenager to drive a stick, and I, the manual transmission. And I drove this big truck with stacks of raspberries on there and drove it to Seattle and, yeah... and my father still had the store and on the weekend he was a weekend farmer. But it was really my mother who did all that work. And that's with a sixth grade education, and five of it was in Japan. So she was able to read and write Japanese, and she must have adjusted to English in that first year in school, sixth grade. So she...

JN: She did pretty well for herself.

LK: Uh-huh.

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