<Begin Segment 2>

DG: So your dad was farming in Freeport area.

KS: Area, yeah. It was with his father and his brothers, they had a dairy and was doing a little bit of farming too. They had to clear all the land. This was all forest at the time, I mean, West Sacramento area. They cleared a lot of the land and farmed there. I don't know what they raised, but they farmed and had dairies and raised cows and things like that. And for, to survive, they had their own pig and chickens, lots of chickens running free. Yeah.

DG: So most of the Japanese immigrants farmed.

KS: Right.

DG: Not that many were in dairy. How, why do you think your father and his family got into cows?

KS: Well, I think that was the easiest thing to do, I suppose. That's why. You know, it's, if you start a business, then you have to have capital to start a business. There were quite a few businesses going, and I think eventually his plan was to make enough money to go back to Japan. But by that time we had nothing but seven kids, so didn't have a chance to go. [Laughs] But I think that's the goal of most of the first generation, was to make enough money to take it back to Japan and buy some property there and live over there, but most of 'em settled here instead because the children came along. They had schools and everything.

JS: Were there other dairy farms in the area?

KS: There were, yeah, there were quite a few dairy farms. Not a big dairy, but made it kind of self-sufficient. They had milk and things like that. But I suppose collectively they, there was quite a few dairies, yeah. A lot of other nationalities, they had farm, I mean the, they raised their own cows.

JS: How many cows did you have?

KS: I really don't know. [Laughs] I don't know.

JS: Do you have a guess?

KS: I don't know, probably ten maybe. Ten, twelve, that's about it.

DG: And did they still have the cows when you were a child?

KS: No, by that time we started regular farming, you know, tilling the ground and growing crops, so gradually got out of the milk business. Mostly the milk was for their own self. Yeah, it wasn't for commercial, 'cause they, the dairy company couldn't go around picking up all the milk from all these small dairies. They might've sold -- I really don't know, but I know, I knew they had maybe three, four cows and they milked it themselves.

DG: And your mother was a midwife.

KS: In a sense, in the neighbors. Instead of going to Sacramento, cross the river -- it's a ferry, that time, no bridge was there, so they had to cross the ferry, and horse and buggy days in those days -- so my mother was a kind of a midwife-like, yeah, helped a lot of mothers give birth.

DG: Was she paid for that? Was that her job?

KS: [Laughs] No, no, that wasn't her job. It was just helping, I guess, helping the neighbors. Because she was a kind of a nurse in Japan, so she knew about birthing and hospital care. So I guess the neighbors depended on her, so they never went to Sacramento, until later. Back in, maybe around 1930s, then they started, they had a bridge built already, by Freeport, they could cross the bridge and get an old Model T Ford and they'll go town and stay in town. But until then, they were all dependent on midwives. Yeah, or some person that knew something about birthing. But they all, my neighbors were, most of it, most of the neighbors around my age was, she helped, she helped bring them to... yeah.

DG: So did you and your siblings go to school in Clarksburg?

KS: Yes.

DG: The elementary school there?

KS: Elementary and high school. I went through all the elementary, eighth grade, and senior year, right when, on my graduation day we were evacuated. We were gettin' on the train to go to Tule Lake. [Laughs]

DG: Wow. So was the Clarksburg elementary school segregated or integrated?

KS: It was integrated. Yeah, down the river they were segregated, but ours, Clarksburg wasn't segregated. So we had a lot of Portuguese and other Caucasians, and there was quite a few Japanese there too, but not like Courtland, Walnut Grove. They had segregated school because there were so many Chinese and Japanese over there.

DG: Yeah. We heard of those.

KS: They were segregated, yeah.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.