<Begin Segment 16>

JS: So how many people came back to Isleton? Your family went to the cannery for about a year, huh?

BK: Yeah. I don't know, but quite a few of my friends' families came back, and they worked in the canneries. And after I graduated, my family moved to San Jose. So I stayed with the family as a caregiver.

JS: And your family moved to San Jose to work...

BK: Driscoll Farms.

JS: Strawberries?

BK: Yeah, strawberries.

JS: And the farm.

BK: Uh-huh.

JS: So your brother had found work there, and...

BK: Oh, my brothers worked out. Farming was secondary. So my brothers, yeah. And my sister, yeah, got married.

JS: And so when did you move to Sacramento? You moved to Sacramento after that?

BK: Oh, gee, we've been married fifty-nine years. It's been that long.

JS: Okay, let's see. What do you hope that your children and future generations, other people, will know about Isleton's Japantown? What do you want people to know about Isleton?

BK: That it was a close-knit community, and very friendly whether you were Kumamoto or Hiroshima or whatever. 'Cause I didn't know about a lot of things about the Japanese from Japan. Now I know.

JS: So the town itself, the Japantown in Isleton, did any of the merchants come back? Or when people came back, they just came to the cannery.

BK: The only housing, yeah. I think most of them lost their place of business. And so, yeah, so the cannery was the only place of employment. And to work in the cannery, you lived in these little cabins. And so if they had a bigger family, then you would get two little cabins. And that didn't have, you know, private bathroom or anything, it was just two rooms. And then so they come to me and says, "How come you guys got a regular house?" And I said, "Because my brother came looking for it and this happened to be open."

<End Segment 16> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.