Densho Digital Archive - Kay Shimada Interview (denshovh-skay

<Begin Segment 7>

DG: How often would you go into Sacramento Japantown?

KS: At least about once a week, I guess. Yeah, that was after we got automobiles, that is. We had to go buy... otherwise they'd go in once a month, I guess, with a horse and buggy, and bring the supplies back, and no bridges, so we had to cross the, wait for the ferries to come back and forth. Yeah, I remember that. Then the bridges came in, then the Model T Fords and those; then we used to go into town at least once a week.

DG: When you do think your family first got a car? How old do you think you were?

KS: Let's see now, I must've been in the eighth grade or something like that, I suppose. Seventh or eighth grade. My father used to drive it. And my mother even, without a license, every Saturday she used to take us to Japanese school, until my oldest brother got a license, and then we, he used to take us. Then he quit because he didn't want to go to the school anymore. Then it was my turn, so I liked it. I used to drive. My sister, first chance she had a chance to drive, she gets into an accident. She was saying goodbye to the boys, then boom, they got in an accident. [Laughs] They were a little older than I, so they just drove that one or two times and that was it. But you know, it's lucky that they had Japanese school. I'm glad I learned a little bit.

JS: I have a question. Would you ever go to Walnut Grove, go into town that way?

KS: Yeah, once in a while I'd go to Walnut Grove. Yeah, my oldest sister was married to a man from Walnut Grove, so she, they used to live there, until they moved to West Sacramento to be with us, my mother and our family, so they moved to West Sacramento. Until then, yeah, we used to go to Walnut Grove quite often. I wouldn't say quite often, but maybe once a month or once every two months we used to go.

JS: To go, to do shopping?

KS: No, no, no.

JS: Or activities?

KS: Just to, yeah, shopping we did mostly in Sacramento. Walnut Grove was a small town then. They had a lot of, they had a couple of Japanese stores, I suppose, market and stuff. But only time, like I say, is bazaar or something like that, it's only chance we had to go to Walnut Grove. Otherwise, school, our school, high school and grammar school, didn't go that far. Now they're, I hear a lot of Courtland and Walnut Grove people coming into Clarksburg school because there, there's not enough population out there to go to school, to keep the school going. They closed up down there and they're all coming to this Clarksburg school. Yeah, we had people coming from West Sacramento. That kept the school going. Otherwise, there wasn't enough amount of people. After the second generation graduated, that was it. The third generation's too far apart. [Laughs] Yeah.