Densho Digital Archive - Kay Shimada Interview (denshovh-skay

<Begin Segment 12>

DG: And you haven't mentioned the wife 'til now, so how did you meet your wife?

KS: [Laughs] Well, at that time they were all prearranged -- not prearranged, but all relatives, they try to marry into other families. So I met my wife at West Sacramento. There was another oldtime farmers and it was one of her relative's daughter.

DG: After the war.

KS: This is after the war, yeah. This is back in '56. That's when I got married, 1956.

DG: And where, where did you marry? Where was the wedding?

KS: Sacramento.

DG: The Buddhist church?

KS: Buddhist church, yes. Buddhist church, and that was the old church, not the new one now. The old one, on N Street, I guess it is. It's an old, small church.

DG: And what was your wife's name?

KS: Her name was, last name's Takagi.

DG: Takagi?

KS: Takagi, yeah. Tokiko Takagi. And I didn't know the family or anything. It was more like an arranged kind. Showed me the picture and, "Will you, are you willing to meet her?" I said yeah, okay. Why not? Anybody wanna come to the farm and be a housewife on the farm, more power to 'em. [Laughs] So yeah, she --

JS: She was from a farm family, farming family?

KS: No, she was a banker's daughter. Yeah, I mean, banker, but she was a, worked in the bank. Banker's daughter, we call it. [Laughs]

DG: And so you built a house pretty quickly.

KS: After one year. After one year. We were pretty successful in our farming operation, so we bought some land and on that land I built the house.

DG: Do you still live in that house?

KS: No, no, no. We sold that. We had to move out when we... they were rebuilding all of West Sacramento. At that time they were buying up land, some big construction company. Never went through, so it's still the same, it's still there.

DG: The house is still there.

KS: They broke 'em, they busted up the house alright. They tore it down. But you know, because they had to get ready to put their own homes there, but that never went through.

DG: So there was gonna be a big subdivision.

KS: Yeah, that's what it was.

DG: So they bought your property.

KS: They bought my property and my neighbors' property and all that.

DG: Did you get a good price? Were you, did you want to sell?

KS: Pretty good, yeah. That was, what we got, I bought a home in town. Not I bought a home, I had a contractor build a house for me, and still had money left. Yeah, we were lucky. And then that's how we got started.

DG: Again in West Sacramento?

KS: No. Yeah, I guess it was in West Sacramento. [Laughs] Yeah, West Sacramento. That was, my brother-in-law had five acres of land there, and I bought one corner, one third of an acre, and he says, "Okay, you can, since you got married, go ahead and build a house there."

Off camera: Kay, Kay, she confused you. She's talking about, their second house after West Sacramento, did you move into midtown, or did you move into Sacramento?

KS: This is not in town. This is outside of town in the farm area.

Off camera: Right.

DG: But then you said that the, they came and bought all that property.

KS: Yeah.

DG: And tore it...

KS: Yeah, they, as it turned out, they were gonna rebuild and they tore all the houses down.

DG: So if you built that house in 1956 --

KS: '56.

DG: -- when did they come...

KS: We moved out of there in '59.

DG: Oh, really quickly.

KS: Yeah, '59 I moved into town.

DG: Into Sacramento.

KS: Into Sacramento. We weren't forced to or anything like that, but it just happened, you know? I bought a house in Sacramento instead.

DG: Did you continue, did the Shimada Brothers continue?

KS: No, no, we had already, it was incorporated. We sold everything out in 1958. We sold out everything, farm, all the equipment.

DG: Wow. So then what did you do for a living?

KS: Retired. [Laughs] I didn't do anything. Yeah, we were all retired by then.

DG: So you've been retired for fifty years?

KS: Oh, yeah. Don't I look it? [Laughs]

DG: So you were able to quit working at age thirty-eight?

KS: No, not thirty-eight.

DG: But you're eighty-eight.

KS: I'm eighty-eight, yeah.

DG: That's more than fifty years ago. I think, wait, are you sure --

KS: I guess so. I didn't, I didn't... yeah, I guess that's what it was. We didn't farm too long, no. We started in '46, 1946. That's when we were, I mean, my folks and them, they were released from camp and they started farming, and '47 I think, earnestly they started to farm. Then I got discharged and so we bought more. We farmed a little more bigger. And by that time we were buying land instead, not too big, but enough for a house for my parents and a big shop. And my brother had his home, and I bought, I had my home built out there, and my younger brother had his in Sacramento. All three of us brothers, we were farming.

DG: But so by the late '50s you sold the properties you owned.

KS: Not '50s.

DG: '60s?

KS: I thought, I thought 1986.

Off camera: Who was, who was President when you retired?

KS: Oh, don't tell me that, don't ask me the President. [Laughs]