Densho Digital Archive - Jimmie Omura Interview (denshovh-ojimmie-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

CO: Now to get back to the custom of banishment which came from Japan, can you give us an example of...?

JO: Well, yes, my eldest brother went with two schoolmates, white schoolmates, to a farm. They say it was on the other end of the island, I don't exactly know where. And they raided the white farmer's vegetable garden. And he got caught while the two white boys got away. And my father went to see what he could do when he was in jail. We didn't see him or hear about him for the next... about five months. And then we heard that he was working as a water boy in the Cascade. And we gather from that that he had been banished because we knew the custom of banishment on the island because of other incidents. And that he had been...

[Interruption]

CO: He's been caught after playing this prank, and he's in jail.

JO: I thought it was a prank. [Laughs] And we never, he never came home. And my father, being an old line Meiji man, would never tell us what happened to him. In other words, that was the custom, we were never told anything. And, and five months later, my next brother learned that he was working as a water boy on a railroad in the Cascades. And we gathered from that that he had been banished from home. Because banishment was a custom we were all well aware of.

CO: How old was he?

JO: Huh?

CO: How old was he?

JO: He was eleven years old.

CO: Did he ever, did he ever get... did he ever return? Was he ever taken back by the family?

JO: No, he was never taken back by the family but he did visit the following Easter. And during the vacation, I got into a scrape with him and I got shot by him and he was banished for good from home.

CO: You were shot by him?

JO: Yes, I was shot, accidentally. Well, I was shot in the side and wound up in the Seattle General Hospital. And the surgeon told me that if it had gone through -- it was halfway through the rib -- if it had gone through, it would have hit my lung and goodbye. But the bullet had been stopped by the rib.

CO: Now, are you still in touch with him?

JO: No, last time I saw him was in 1935 at a small railroad stop in the Cascade, and he wouldn't speak to me. And I think that's because he probably blamed me for his banishment. And I'm the one who was injured. [Laughs]