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DG: Now, let's see... after boarding school, your mother... can you tell me about her coming down to Bainbridge Island? What, how was she able to do that and at what age? What was that like for her?

DR: She was nineteen when she came down. Before that I guess she was working with, in the canneries over in Canada for a while. Then she decided to come down with her sister, Auntie Nora, and her brother Ralph, and Evelyn Williams, actually, she became Anacleto Corpuz' wife. And that was her best friend and they came over and they stayed in the cabins and picked berries. And that's where they met Dad, and the rest is history. [Laughs]

DG: Can you tell me the story of how your parents met?

DR: Oh, they were at... Mom and them were down in Winslow where the library, Safeway, and everything was, that was Dan Bucsit's big farm down there, it was all in strawberries. And even that irrigation pond they call the Blue Heron, that was an irrigation pond. [Laughs] Anyway, Mom was in this... they had this big old army tent, and that's where my mom and my aunt and her friend stayed. And my dad went down there to see Dan Bucsit and he saw Mom and caught his eye, and that was it. That was history, then he was courtin' her, helping her pick berries. Before you know it they were married.

DG: So he came over to Dan Bucsit's land to help pick berries?

DR: Help my mom. [Laughs] Help my mom pick berries.

DG: And can you tell me about that summer and their wedding and the other marriages that occurred that summer?

DR: Oh yeah, there was big weddings and stuff. I remember where the Furukawa land where dad and them were leasing, they built a big platform so there could be dancing and everything else there for Tommy and Dorothy's wedding. And that's about what they did.

DG: Do you know why so many First Nation women came down to help work the farms on Bainbridge Island? How that got started and the history of that?

DR: You know, I've never really... actually, they were coming down on the farms... like I know a lot of them met over there in Mount Vernon, too, 'cause they were doin' the hops and different things and they just kind of followed the crops because there wasn't very many jobs, for just about anything. And I don't know how it started, but I know that a lot of the native families came down to pick berries for the Japanese farmers, too, Koura and I think your grandparents, too, the Kitamotos. And they came over to our farm, too.

DG: And do you know what the impact World War II had on the farms here on Bainbridge Island? Do you have any idea, or any ideas on what that did to, to farming for Japanese farmers as well as Filipino farmers?

DR: Well, it just seems like a lot of the Filipino farmers, Filipinos, were working on the farms, the Japanese farms at the time, and it just seemed like when they got taken away is when a lot of them became caretakers of different various farms. And then they, the Filipinos, the Filipinos were working down at the shipyard, too, Hall Brothers, during the war. A lot of 'em got, lot of them got their trade down there. My father did.

DG: So it provided an opportunity to get a different, another trade?

DR: Yeah.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.