<Begin Segment 3>

MN: So let me ask you a little bit about your father. I know that a lot of, you shared that a lot of things that you learned about your father was from your aunt. What did you do before the family, the children came along?

SO: That I don't know. You know, he, like all Japanese Isseis, they were pretty closed mouthed about their early childhood and their marriage and whatever they happened to be doing at the time, but he never really discussed what he did or how he earned a living. But I do know that after we were born he had several different, what would you say, vocations I guess. Like I know we had a boarding house, had a gas station, had another market -- this was all in Sacramento -- but after my mother died he was a pretty transient sort of person.

MN: So you mentioned your father had a market, and at this, this second market what, who were his customers?

SO: Primarily the neighborhood was Mexican. And my father was sort of a trusting sort of person and he gave them credit and they took off, didn't pay their bills, so that market was sort of a bust.

MN: Now, did you mention he also had a rice ranch?

SO: Pardon me?

MN: A rice ranch?

SO: Well, that was before we were born, I think. He was fairly prosperous, from what I understand, and we have a family picture, a family picture of my mother and father, and they were pretty nattily dressed, like they were fairly prosperous. But I understand he had a rice farm. He also had a rooming house, apartments. Then he dabbled in mercantile. I guess he had a trading company as well. But this was all before I was born, and I guess that he lost it all in the Depression. My earliest recollection is that we were, he was a foreman on a hops and lettuce ranch.

MN: When you were living, when he was a foreman where were you living?

SO: Well, it was, the owner's tenant shack. I mean, it really was a shack, and if you thought that the camp barracks were bad, these were worse. We had to plug up the holes, knotholes in the boards that covered the outside of the, exterior of the house with paper and stuff paper in the cracks just to keep the weather out.

MN: Now, you moved around quite a lot with your father.

SO: Yes.

MN: How many schools did you go to before you went to, graduated from high school?

SO: Probably about ten, eleven.

MN: And so when you were, when your father was working as a foreman on this ranch, was this when you started elementary school?

SO: No, it was later. When I started elementary school, I think I started kindergarten when I was with my aunt in San Francisco. But, I mean, that recollection is sort of faded, but I do know that my first grade was at a single classroom school in Yolo County. That's where my father was farming. And the way that you knew what grade you were in was by the seating. Kindergarten, or first grade, second grade, third grade, and they were all seated in rows. And all I can remember are flash cards that the teacher used to flash in front of the kindergarten class, but what we did while she was teaching the rest of the classes I don't remember.

MN: So this was really a one room school with one teacher?

SO: Yes.

MN: How many Asian Americans or Japanese Americans were in the entire room?

SO: There must've been only about ten or fifteen students, and my brother and I probably were the only Japanese in there.

MN: How did you interact with the other non-Japanese American students?

SO: We got along. I mean, there was no animosity.

MN: What was the name of the school?

SO: Monument.

MN: So after school what sort of games did you play?

SO: I guess after school, we had to walk to and from school, so after school we used to wander through these, they call 'em sloughs, and they were just stagnant ponds of water that would overflow from the Sacramento River. And we'd go looking for frogs and toads and insects, you know. Typical country bumpkins.

MN: Now, was it at this hops ranch that your father had raised rabbits?

SO: No, I think this was later, where the houses were really nice. I mean, they were plastered inside and stuccoed outside, and being that my dad was the foreman, we lived in the main, main house there, which was a nice house. Then we had a barn, and in the barn, in the horse stall, my father raised rabbits, and they were like, more like pets. But my dad considered them to be food, so he would kill a rabbit and, being that the rabbit was sort of our pets, I couldn't eat rabbit, and I never did eat rabbit after that. But oddly enough, in camp, our senior banquet, the main menu was rabbit, so I didn't partake in that. I gave it to the fellow across from me, who ate it with relish. [Laughs]

MN: What about chickens, though? Did you raise chickens?

SO: Yeah, chickens, they weren't considered pets, I guess, so we had chicken.

MN: Did you have any problems eating the chickens?

SO: No.

MN: Let me go back to the rabbits. Did your father skin the rabbits and sell the pelts?

SO: No, I don't think he sold pelts. He probably threw them away.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.