<Begin Segment 5>

JS: As the oldest daughter, what were some of your responsibilities at home?

TS: Well, cooking or... 'cause Mother had to go work. Try to help, you know.

JS: What is the age difference between you and your younger siblings, your brothers?

TS: My brother's right under me, just a year apart, and the other one is, is it two or three years apart? Yeah.

DG: Did the three of you also help in the tomato fields?

TS: Well, I know my brother used to go pick up boxes. In those days, were boxes, so fifty pound, lug boxes. So they used, after school they used to go pick up those boxes. Yeah.

DG: How far away from the Gakuen did you live?

TS: Gee, that was, I'd say about thirteen miles.

DG: How did you get there?

TS: Our neighbor used to take us, or my father would take time and take us to school, then come back again at three o'clock and pick us up. And he was real strict with education, so we had to go. Like it or not, we had to go.

DG: Do you think it was really important to him that you learn how to speak and read Japanese?

TS: Yeah, I guess maybe someday we might have to go back, because my sister was there. And then we didn't own no land or nothing, so... but as the kids grew, or my brother and we grew up, well, they decided that, well, we better stay here and educate us.

JS: What other activities would happen at the Gakuen besides school?

TS: Like what?

JS: Like what did...

DG: Picnic, New Year's, movies?

TS: Yeah, sometimes they used to bring movies. In the old days they had black and white movies, once in a while. Yeah, but there's no entertainment, music entertainment or nothing like that, no.

DG: So how old were you when you started going to the Gakuen?

TS: When I, when we start grammar school, we all went to Japanese school. So I must've been, what, we start school when...

DG: Five.

JS: Five or six.

TS: Six or something like that, yeah.

DG: And then you did that until...

TS: Yeah, until the war broke out. It's a long --

DG: Were your, were your brothers part of the sports teams? The local...

TS: No. They were too young, so they didn't join, no. They used to have a baseball team, and that's about it, I guess, the baseball team. No basketball or nothing like that.

JS: Did you used to go to watch the baseball team?

TS: Yeah, we used to go watch it, yeah.

DG: Where did they play?

TS: They played against the other, like Sacramento or Florin or Lodi. They all had a team too.

DG: And were there baseball fields?

TS: Yeah, just like --

DG: In each place?

TS: Yeah, they all -- well, not in Clarksburg, but, well, they used, I know, I remember one time they used our Clarksburg High School field. Yeah, they had baseball all over.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.