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JD: Let's talk a little bit more just about the, what the Japanese American community was like on Bainbridge when you were a kid, and the kinds of activities they engaged in, were they very connected to the non-Japanese community or was it more they had their own cultural and social activities?

JH: Well, most of the Japanese citizens that lived on the island were engulfed in their farms. And they had very little time for anything else. But I do remember some of the nice times that we had with our summer picnics. There's an annual summer picnic, and everybody would leave their farms and make nice lunches and sake. [Laughs] I remember several gentlemen laying in a ditch out in Foster Park, which is only a few feet from here, drunk and feeling no pain. And that's a very unusual situation that I confronted. But it was a lesson to know what sake can do for you. But those were memorable picnics they had, and it was in Foster Park right here. There's a Foster Street now, that's all that's left of Foster Park. But that used to be a park that the citizens lived close to the activity. Well, of course, what I strongly remember is that Bainbridge Gardens was not only a grocery store, it was a post office. And it was a meeting place for people who spread the news. And when you stop and think about it, there's lots of these grocery stores in those days, probably only a mile or two apart. And they were local post offices and gossip places, and that's how some of the news got around. Because most of the people didn't have cars to go from one car to another, or one community to another, and that would be the meeting place for the new news. Somebody's having a baby, somebody broke his leg, etcetera, etcetera. And so there was a lot of grocery stores on Bainbridge Island. If you do a history report on it you can probably find that there's probably more than twelve grocery stores on Bainbridge.

JD: Would they sell mostly some canned goods and then locally produced foods?

JH: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, locally produced foods, yeah. The people themselves canned their own vegetables in those days. I remember my mother canning vegetables for the winter.

JD: What did she put up, do you remember?

JH: I don't really remember. There were a lot of Japanese pickles and stuff like that. I don't recall... then there was interracial groups that would exchange things like lutefisk and those horrible things that some people eat.

JD: But at home, you ate Japanese food.

JH: That's right. And some of it I hated. But I spoke of going, you're being surrounded by nature and there's a lot of, we had really lots of clams and perch and that type of fish. And a lot of root vegetables were grown in the gardens 'cause they would store well in the wintertime, and I hated all of them.

JD: Your folks had a root cellar that they'd store the...

JH: Yeah, they did.

JD: And your mother would make you lunches of, Japanese type lunches that you'd take to school?

JH: Yeah, there is... we were pretty poor at that time. Actually, this is after the war. We had a real struggle right after the war because we came back to pretty much total devastation as far as the nursery part of the greenhouse as Bainbridge Gardens is concerned. So I remember eating potato sandwiches, and I remember eating sandwiches with Jell-o in it just for color. But mostly it was just bread and starchy foods, those with carbohydrates, I guess. But there was very little meat. I weighed 127 pounds, and I was a guard in the football team. [Laughs] Whereas some of the people, we used to play the North Kitsap Vikings, and those guys were eating a lot of fish and meat, and they had ways to sustain themselves, and they whopped the heck out of us every year. [Laughs] As far as the community is concerned, they did have evening meetings at times, they were community meetings, and they were pretty much exclusive to Japanese. But they also had a minister, a Buddhist monk come over once a month and conduct a service. That became one of the highlights of their lives and were able to have a little spirituality in their life. But they had this chant that they, for the services, and us kids, stupid as we were, we'd start chanting and making up our own rhythm and chant, and we'd start giggling and stuff. It's a wonder we didn't get our ears boxed off.

JD: You'd make up your own words to go along with it?

JH: [Laughs] That's right.

JD: Your parents were Buddhist, or were they also members of a local congregation?

JH: Yeah, they were both Buddhist. For the most part, they were probably ninety percent, I'm guessing, ninety percent of the people on the island, Japanese people on the island were Buddhists. There's a few that were Christian.

JD: There was a... I think I've heard there was a Baptist church here that was Japanese, and the minister of that church actually went to Minidoka and continued.

JH: Yeah, I've forgotten his name now, but I remember where his church was right there Wyatt Way. But as far as other community activities, I guess they were surrounded by a work schedule that's 24/7.

JD: Was there a strawberry festival on Bainbridge also?

JH: Yes, there was, yes. Yes, there was. It started out to be a summer festival, then because of the people converting their farms into strawberry farms, there was a strawberry festival.

JD: Did your dad and your uncle grow strawberries or did they never get into that?

JH: Well, you know, there was a story behind that. There was a guy that started a strawberry farm, and that particular year, the price was good and the quantity was good, the quality was good, and so word got around that everybody should raise strawberries. Well, raising strawberries is a fickle game. You're kind of a victim of whatever happens in the weather. He made a lot of people suffer a lot because the next year wasn't very good, the prices and the quality. But that evolved with many additional strawberry farms, and some of the more sophisticated farmers such as the Kouras on Koura Road had tremendous production and they were a little more sophisticated in their farming methods. And so it worked out well for them. But most of them, that ties in with what I was talking to you about, having grocery stores. And the local grocery store was also your bank, because if you had a tough year, during the winter they would buy all their signs for their vegetables and their other edible foods. And hopefully, come strawberry time the next year, they'll have enough to pay the poor groceryman. But the groceryperson was very instrumental in some of the, the livelihood of the whole family.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.