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DA: All this time I had my brother. I had an eight-year-old brother when my mother died. A few months later, my father brought him down. He says, "I want you to take care of him." I said, "Okay." And Tom says that was okay with him. But my father never supported that child. He never sent me five cents for that child and I had him for eight years. We got his clothes and things. In the meantime, on the reserve, they received what they called an interest money, to all the members of the nation. Each child and each adult all got money. It was like ten dollars a year or twenty-five dollars a year. My father took, was able to sign and get the money for this child, which he was supposed to send to me, but instead, he put it in the bank for ten years. So my brother had quite a little, you know, nest in the bank. And someone found out that he was puttin' in, money in the bank. He wasn't giving it to me. So they made him pay every penny and send it back in to the head office. So I didn't get it. But I didn't care; I loved my baby brother. Because he was born, he was born to my mother when she was invalid. That made me mad. And my father gave her a pill to abort the child but she didn't take it. Nine months later, she had him. She had two midwives, my grandmother and my aunt delivered him. The day he was born, a few minutes after he was born -- I was sick in bed, I had the flu -- my grandmother came in. She said, "Here's your baby." And I looked at him. So he was seven years old when I left him, and then my dad brought him.

So we had him, so I registered him at McDonald school. That's where that green section... this end of Winslow Way. In there, there was a school in there, so I put him in there. And so he went to school there, and he went right through to high school 'til the tenth grade. And then he turned eighteen. And when he turned eighteen I called up my father. I said, "Harold is eighteen and he's a young man now. What am I gonna do with him?" He says, "You let him go," so I let him go. But all this time, Harold was working with my husband. He worked in the berry fields, he went to school, and he did everything in school that they asked him to. So I let him go. And the first thing he did was get married. I didn't know at the time that the children at school really liked him and so did the teacher. Because I couldn't attend to any of the functions 'cause I had the three little ones. Then he got married and he had five children, then he divorced his wife. He got married again, this woman had seven children, they divorced again. But all this time, the day after he got home, my father said, "You're going to work." So my father called up his sister and told her to put him to work. And he worked right up until he was sixty years old. He was just like my husband. He told me -- he calls me "Mom." I'm not his mother, but he called me "Mom" and he called Tom "Dad." He says, "Dad taught me how to work," and he says, "I don't know how to stop." He meant my husband, not my father. So he retired just a couple of years ago. And the wife he has now told the Squamish Nation, "If you don't let him retire," he says, "he's gonna die. 'Cause all he knows is work." Sure enough, two years, he had a heart attack. And now he's... right down. But his friends from Bainbridge have been in touch with him. He couldn't graduate with him because he was eighteen and they were still sixteen. But he's been in touch with them. They call him, they visit him, from Bainbridge. So, anyway, he worked for Tom, he helped clear up the land. He had... and we paid him, we tried to pay him, and so Tom took over the farm, then he went to work in the shipyard. He worked in the shipyard for nineteen years. And when the Japanese came back, that was really something to me. Because right away, Mr. and Mrs. Suyematsu, Akio, they lived right across from where I lived, we went to, you know, pick berries. I think they had loganberries or something, and we picked for them, worked for them. And they had... I knew Akio. I knew Tosh, I know Tosh's dad, and Eiko, the daughter. Eiko used to come to my neighbor's and she would come and visit with us. And Mrs. Suyematsu loved my -- that, I had three then -- she loved the youngest. She called him "Duke." Yeah. And he really fell in love with her. So, we helped, you know, and visited with her. But her husband was too shy. Never got acquainted with him. 'Cause Akio is just the same, he's so shy. And Tosh was nice. So they were the first.

Then we met Mrs. Kitamoto. There was a nice lady. I used to pack up my two younger ones in the morning and go down and we'd pick for her, pick berries. I didn't know Frank. I know Frank by sight, but I've never been to his... you know, when he was a dentist. And I didn't know the girls, but I heard a lot about them. So Tom kept working, then he retired. And he kept farming, then he planted raspberries. He gave up the strawberries and planted raspberries. And we used to... we had, had about eight rows of strawberries -- raspberries. Then he started to grow peas and beans. We'd pick in the morning-like and go down to Thriftway, and he'd load up the berries or whatever we had, he'd load them on a cart. He'd have me bring them in, he wouldn't bring them in. And there would be me, I'd be over sixty years old, pushing, going in that produce department, got acquainted with all the boys. That's when I met Kay, I met her, and her husband Sam. I haven't seen her since Sam left. Then I got acquainted with quite a few, just by pushing the cart to the store.

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