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HM: Before coming home, back to Bainbridge, I would hear rumors. I was a little apprehensive because you know, you'd hear these rumors about "Oh, people are doing such bad things to other people, and you have to be really good. You have to work hard in school," which I did not. "You have to, you have to be good," which I was not. "You have to be a little bit quiet so people don't notice you so much," which I was not, and so, it was gonna be kind of a change for me. So I was kind of, "Oh, I wonder what's going to happen?" When we got back to Bainbridge, in 1943, no... was it '43? I can't remember. No, '45, excuse me. Yeah, in 1945 we came back between the school session, so we had a chance to kind of get into things at that, at that time. Gene Anderson would come over and the Jones boys would come over to play. I don't remember girls coming actually, but Buddy Cook and several people would come to play with us, so we got a chance to get back into things again. When school started, I was a changed person. My cousin Frances Kitamoto was in my same class, and she was a model student, so, "Oh darn," I had to study. Well, my parents didn't really tell me, you know, "You study harder." They didn't say that stuff. They just wanted to let you... I thought to myself, "I'd better study and I'd better be, you know, pretty good." So I was pretty quiet at school. I'd get home and I'd raise hell. I'd, you know, boss the other kids around. In our household we had the same household. We had Sab, Uncle Sab, and his family, and Uncle Hohoy, and then our family, so we still lived all in that one, one house. We had like... one two... five bedrooms, so, you know, no one could have a bedroom of their own, except for Hohoy. He was the only one who had a bedroom of his own. Everyone had to share bedrooms, share beds. It was pretty crowded, but still we got along okay. We ate in shifts. Soon Uncle Sub got a job at Boeing, so they, their family moved to Seattle, so it was our family and Hohoy that stayed on the island and farmed.

Oh, I guess I should get back to when we just got back from... or even farther back. Our house was taken care of by some Filipino workers that we had before the war. They were in their twenties or so. It was Johnny Cadawas, Thor Madayag, Maximo somebody or another. There were about five or six guys. They moved from their workers quarters into our house. We left almost everything in the house. We did send some of the guns and things down to the Schmidts to hold for us. And some things for the Flodins to watch for us. Some of, some of the things other people took care of for us. Our horse was still there because they, those guys still needed to use it on the farm. So the crops were ready to pick in June and we had left in March. So the Filipino boys -- I shouldn't call them boys, but that's what they were called in those days -- they took care of the farm and they did the harvesting and things. But after a while, I don't think... they gave it up because they got work in the shipyards or other places. Besides that, it would have been hard for them to get the pickers from -- we used to get them from Canada -- and bring them down and things. They gave up the farm and just kind of let it go. When we got back there was no, there were no berries or things for us to get back into. And so my father and Uncle Sub and Hohoy had to find all kinds of work just to get by on. We'd do piece work. Us kids would too, make these, roll these fishing poles and all kinds of things like that. And my father went into gardening and so did Hohoy. He helped Tad Sakuma and Sats Omoto and Happy Nishi and... so they did these different kinds of things just to keep things together. Then they decided to go up to Burlington one year to plant. They did and there was a big, huge berries and things, but there was a big, big rain thing. The berries rotted and they came back home. Eventually they started planting strawberries on the island again in Manzanita. They farmed for quite some time. After Uncle Sub moved, then just Papa and Hohoy took care of the farm and so did, I didn't... we did also. But I didn't like to stay in the house and do housework and stuff like that. I no longer liked ironing. So I used to go out, out to the farm and do the hoeing and the weeding and all those kinds of things with them.

I think... and then in the summertime too when we were, when we had just come back, Thor Madayag had his berries. He lived across the street where the Yukawas lived. So we used to do some weeding there and he'd pay us. And then across the way by Taniguchis, Felix Narte had a strawberry thing there. So this was before our parents re-planted. So we used to go pick berries for him and do some weevil baiting and things like that for him.

It seemed that the summertimes were pretty busy for me because of the farm. I never really got to go to any camps or do that kind of stuff. During the school year we had 4-H. We learned how to sew and things like that. But it was just kind of a normal life other than, we didn't, I never did learn how to swim. Because in the summers I was too busy farming, and it seemed that a lot of the Japanese kids did the same thing. They helped out on the farm and they didn't have much time to go play soccer or tennis or whatever. Those kinds of things were done maybe during the school year. Friends, the friends here were still friends when we came back. And so it was good to know that you had support from the rest of the community. My mother was able to reattach with some of her friends and things like that.

Oh, by the way, during the war when we were in camp, my mother used to correspond during that time and after with many of the young men who went to war. Because she could read and write English and many of their Issei mothers and fathers could not. So they'd write back and forth and then she would write back to the guys to tell them what their parents were doing, and she would tell the parents what their sons were doing. I'm still looking for those letters that she received during the wartime. I found some that she received after World War II was over and those guys are still going into the service or were still in the service.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.