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TI: So let's go back, so you were just talking about how they got married in Seattle. And so this was about five years after your father had come to the United States?

JK: Yeah, well, it was 1910 when she came over here. And they were married in Seattle, and my father was working for, as a labor contractor for Utah Idaho Sugar Company. And they, so that's why they came to Utah. And, of course, my father had some friends, old friends that were farming here, and as it turned out, why, I think they helped my father in securing the land for these various farmlands that she, that he had worked on. As a matter of fact, in the years from 1910 until about 1922, which is only a period of about twelve years, why, we had moved from Salina, where my older brother was born, to Richfield, and then from Richfield to Layton, Utah. And then from Layton down to Delta, and from Delta to Spanish Fork, and then from Spanish Fork to Roy, and then from Roy to Ogden, and then from Ogden to Salt Lake.

TI: So explain to me why your family had to move so much.

JK: Well, that's because my father, I don't know how he managed to secure the rental properties that he farmed, he decided he'd go farming. And it was, it's unusual, I thought -- and I never talked to him about it and he never, he never did mention how he secured these farmlands and these various places. Now, from, I'd say from Salt Lake... well, Salt Lake was our last place, but then before that it was, like at Salina, Utah, which is in the southern part of the state, and then from there to Richfield it's a short distance. And that was a period between 1911 until 19', about 1914. And from that time we moved to Layton, and in 1916 my younger brother was born.

TI: Well, let me, let me see if we can get a little more information here. So you mentioned your father, so he was renting or leasing the land that he farmed?

JK: Yeah, well, he, I think he was just renting the land.

TI: Okay, renting the land, and then what kind of crops did he raise?

JK: Well, at first it was sugar beets, and then it was, like, alfalfa, and then he went into truck gardening, which was like onions and radishes and cantaloupe, watermelon, and produce like that.

TI: And do you recall when he would first go to a new, like a new farm, was the land pretty undeveloped or was it already farmland?

JK: No, it was under-, well, it was developed to a point, but not to the point where it was productive. That's why he had to leave. We left all the farms in that period, in that early period, because the farmland was all alkaline, and it was not suitable for actual, the growth of any, any products that he could sell. At first, I think he was satisfied with sugar beets, because we had a big sugar beet industry here at that time. But then when the sugar beet industry fell down, why, he decided to go into truck farming, which meant radishes and onions and strawberries, and the type that would be sold on the market to all the neighboring people. It wasn't, it wasn't like a big sugar beet farm or an alfalfa field or other type of feed products for animals.

TI: Okay, good. I mean, when I see this pattern it reminds me, I've done interviews with other farming families, and oftentimes they would sort of rent or lease the land for five years, and it was undeveloped, they would then make it into productive farmland, at which point they had to then move to another place because the owner actually wanted the land. So then in certain places in the Northwest, they would use --

JK: Well, I don't think that, I don't think any of the land that, that we farmed was suitable for lengthy farming. Because after maybe a year or two, the land would give out, and it would be usurped by alkali, or it'd be not very productive from the standpoint of the growth pattern of whatever, whatever he planted.

TI: Okay, so that makes sense. So maybe the land just gave out and he had to move to someplace else.

JK: Well, the only place that was productive was in Ogden. And at that time, this was about 1930, and my mother decided that Ogden didn't have a university. And for that reason, she wanted to come to Salt Lake because Salt Lake had a university here, and she wanted to make sure that, that all three of us went to the university. And this was when my older brother was graduating from high school, and so my father gave up his gardening farm in Ogden and came to Salt Lake. And when we came to Salt Lake and moved into this big house, which was owned originally by a polygamist family, and it was a big house, big farmhouse with... well, had, I think it had an icehouse, a barn, chicken ranch, and a grape vineyard. And it was the first house that we had occupied that had indoor plumbing. All the other houses prior to that never had indoor plumbing. We had to have, in Ogden, my father had, like a Nihonburo type of a bath, bathhouse outside the house, see.

TI: So I'm curious about this, this house that you bought from this, that used to house a polygamist. I mean, I'm curious, was the house different in any way in terms of the construction, in terms of the room arrangements or anything like that?

JK: Oh, yes. Well, the original, I'd say up until about... up until 1930, well, all the houses that we occupied were either just sheds or like two-room houses without any indoor plumbing. And they were just, actually they weren't, the one house in Spanish Fork, there was, it was a regular house, but it only had, I think, two bedrooms. But all the plumbing was outside, and we had --

TI: And so for instance, like this house in Salt Lake City, how many bedrooms did it have?

JK: Do I have?

TI: Well, in Salt Lake City, the house that you moved in...

JK: Oh, that was a big house. It was a house that was originally lived in by a polygamist family, and there was about eight bedrooms in that house.

TI: So why such a large house? There were only three boys.

JK: Well, we didn't occupy all the bedrooms. In fact, my two brothers occupied one bedroom, and I occupied a small room by myself, and my parents occupied another bedroom. And so, and on the upstairs, there was four bedrooms upstairs, but there was a family in Salt Lake, the two children were, I think they were really unhealthy children, and they needed some... oh, they needed some fresh vegetables and the fresh atmosphere of country life. And so we rented that house to these two little kids and the grandmother, they lived in part of the house that we had there, because it was a house that was big enough for at least, I'd say ten kids. And the original polygamist family there, they had eight kids, but they had all grown up and they'd gone away, and that's how we happened to move into that house.

TI: Well, this is a first for me. I'd never heard of a Nisei living in a house that was, that was built by a polygamist, so that's a new one.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.