<Begin Segment 2>

DG: Okay, so could you clarify the generations of everyone in your family?

HM: The first generation that came to the United States was the Hayashidas who was, who were Tsunetaro and Moto Hayashida. Their son was my father, was born in Japan, and he was left in Japan with an aunt. Then the rest of the children were all born either in Hawaii, Bellevue, or Bainbridge. Then on my grandmother's side, my grandfather Tsunekichi and grandmother Tomiya, were born in Japan, so they were first generation. Then all their children were born in either Seattle or Bainbridge or Bellevue. That was the generations. Then I'm, I guess, the two and a half generation because my mother was Issei, my mother, my mother Nisei, and my father Issei. And so we would be either... I always say "ni-hansei," two and a half generations. And so that's how the generations went.

After... oh, as you know the Japanese, when the Issei came over, could not own land because they were of an Asian descent. And so they had to wait until their children got older because they were citizens so they could become, they could become landowners. And so my Nishinaka side had their land put into Shigeko's name. And then the Hayashida side had Saburo, Saburo's name on their land. Okay, so...

[Interruption]

HM: Okay. As I said, they had built a new house and we moved from that same property from this cedar square shack into this new house that was two stories with a basement. This was on, in Island Center, right before... road where the Strawberry Hill Park is now. And that house is still standing. But in that house lived my uncle Tsuneichi, Hohoy -- who was a bachelor -- and then Saburo and Fumiko -- and we called her Miyan -- Hayashida and their children Neil, Natalie. And then and our family was my father Ichiro, my mother Nobuko, Tomi, myself, Yasuko, Hiro, and Susan. So we had a house full but we all got along okay, I guess.

Anyway, you know we had indoor plumbing and which many houses at that time, people did not have at that time. Life there was like life for almost everyone on the island. Almost everyone on the island were living, like, from hand to mouth. Everyone had to find their own food more or less and grow their own food, and hunt. Our uncles would go hunting for pheasant and deer and quail. My father would and we would go fishing and clamming and getting octopus and seaweed and gathering things from the sea as well as going into the woods to get mushrooms and ferns and different things along side of having chickens and growing our own vegetables and things. We had a horse to feed, that would help with the plowing and things like that. Yeah, so it was pretty much the same as everyone else on the island. People didn't mind if you went on their beach to gather clams, dig clams, or whatever. Everyone on the island kind of shared. There were no really rich people on the island. Everyone kind of just got along well, I think partly because of that. Because they knew that everyone else was working hard to make a go of it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.