Densho Digital Archive - Ben Tamashiro Interview (denshovh-tben

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LD: You started saying, I'd like you to tell us again about, you said when you go to store sometimes you feel very inadequate. Would you tell us about that again, about the picket fence and all that? Tell us that again, tell us that story. And you said when you look at this, you feel very inadequate.

BT: Yeah, when I see this kind of thing, it kind of shames me, really, that I couldn't even read the wording on my mother's headstone, four-by-four block of wood that represented, that stood on top of her grave. We used to pour water over it and, I guess, rub our hands, say a prayer. But when I think of it now, it was such a beautiful thing, out in the lonely beach side, there's a little cemetery, Japanese cemetery, it was something like this, but it was closer to the beach, so it was sandy out there. But we used to have Kiawe trees like this all around. And hers, somehow I guess my dad built a nice little picket fence, it was painted, I guess, stained green, and there used to be a little latch on it. We used to open the latch and go in and pull all the weeds around that place. Then we used to bring along a gallon of water and pour it over the marker. And I guess the symbolism there is to cleanse the thing and so forth, and then you put the senko and little bowls of rice and oranges and whatever it is. And say our prayers, and then latch it and leave. Now this is a ritual we used to go through every year. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I used to do it. And now that I'm at this age, I wish I could recapture the whole incident. I wish I had kept that headstone, I wish I had kept that picket fence.

Kent: Still had a wooden marker?

BT: Yeah, wooden marker, to find out what it said. To find out what it said. And, of course, when my dad... she died in 1918... when I was a year and a half, when I was a year and a half.

[Interruption]

LD: Just start with where you grew up, and that your mother died when you were a year and a half, so you grew up with your father and what he did for a living and what you did.

BT: Yeah, okay.

LD: Just those kind of things.

BT: And then about, oh, I guess about five years later, he remarried.

K: How old were you?

BT: Oh, I was probably about six, seven, eight, thereabouts, anyway. And in the interval, while I did not have a mother, I was sent off to live with my aunt in a town called Kalaheo, which is probably about ten miles away. And I remember going to school in Kalaheo as a first grader or kindergarten -- oh, they didn't have kindergarten in those days, we had first grade. So those very first years of schooling, I think I spent with my auntie over in this other town of Kalaheo. Then I guess my father remarried, then I came back to my hometown of Hanapepe, and then I grew up there 'til maybe about when I was twelve, I guess. Then he moved the [inaudible] up on the hill, which is Eleele, which is right next to McBryde Plantation. That's where I spent the rest of my years until I got into World War II in, I think it was 1940. One of the first drafts I volunteered for. And one of the reasons I volunteered for that is because I had a low draft number, and knowing that my time was coming up, I said, "Oh, well, I might as well get in." But I think the bigger motivation in back of volunteering was to get out. I'd been living there for twenty-three years then. I just couldn't see myself being stuck on a planation. I said to myself, "God almighty, is this the place for me?" The west end of the Hawaiian chain, you couldn't go any further west, almost, anyway. And even then, I used to dream about the other world outside of Kauai, because I used to do a lot of reading. I used to do a lot of reading. And through that reading, I guess I got some familiarity with the outside world, what some of the things were.