<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Okay, now you mentioned kenjinkai picnics before, so I take it that there was enough people from Fukushima-ken?

GH: Not so many as, we were invited to all these other, but mostly people here were from, where is that fishing...

MN: Wakayama?

GH: Wakayama and Kumamoto and... different places like that.

AK: Hiroshima?

GH: Hiroshima, yes. Hiroshima, a lot of people from there. So they had (kenjinkai picnics), we were invited to all the different kenjinkai picnics because they wanted us to dance.

MN: The Fukushima kenjinkai itself didn't have its own --

GH: Yes. They do have a kenjinkai, but it's not as big as the other groups of people who were here.

MN: Let me ask you about the beach. Did your parents take you to the beach?

GH: Yes. My mother said that she wanted to take us to the beach in the summer because all winter long we're sick. And my father said if he can't go to White Point, he says it's not fun for him and he doesn't want to go. So they had a big to do about that, and that year my father and mother, they didn't take us to the beach. Well, then all winter long we were sick and so the next year my father gave in. He took us to Redondo Beach or to Hermosa Beach, which was close to home and we could go during the day and come back. And we took all the neighborhood kids with us so we could all have fun, and we did do a lot of beach going. And my father'd get around the posts, the pier, the posts by the pier, and catch these little crabs for us, so we had fun catching crabs and things. Not I, but my brothers and the other kids. [Laughs] But yeah, that year and thereafter he took us to the beach a lot.

MN: Did you eat those little crabs?

GH: No, no, no. They were just for fun, to know where they were, and the barnacles, things like, those living things.

MN: What about, like the park, did they take you to different parks?

GH: We went to, yes, occasionally they took us to Banning Park, which was nearby. And again, we took friends, our friends and kids from our neighborhood, and neighbors too so the adults could have fun too. Yeah.

MN: So when you went on these picnics, kenjinkai picnics or beach or park, what kind of obento did your mother pack?

GH: She made the Japanese-type bentos. Yeah, I loved the egg roll, egg things she made and... just a few of the things, I would eat. [Laughs] Wasn't too crazy about all the other things, and I wasn't crazy about fish, so I didn't have any of those other exotic foods.

MN: So it wasn't food from your, the chop suey house?

GH: No, wasn't, it wasn't from the chop suey house. It was, well, we had maybe chashu in there, though. [Laughs]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.