Densho Digital Archive - Bill Hirabayashi Interview (denshovh-hbill

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MA: So tell me a little bit about your mother. And where was she from in Japan?

BH: Okay, she's from a town called Fujimoto, I guess it was. Yeah, I really can't remember. I went over there when I went to Japan, but her family owned a department store. And my dad's family had a silk farm. And that's about as much as I know about my mother other than the fact that she, because in her younger days she went to this school that was for girls and all that. So she used to play tennis and all sorts of things like that. This is why when we were kids, my brother Martin and my mother used to go over to the Thomas school and play tennis a lot. And my brother introduced us into badminton, so we all had, we used to play badminton at home. We used to tie one end onto the tree, and then the other end, there was nothing to tie it to, so we tied the net onto the truck mirror, and we had a lot of fun and whatever. So when our friends used to go by and they'd see it, they'd stop and it was sort of a gathering place that way.

MA: And so it sounds like your mother was a very active woman.

BH: Yeah, she was a... anybody that could raise eight kids has got to be pretty tough. [Laughs] I have to give her a lot of credit.

MA: So tell me about your siblings. There's eight of you, you said. Can you name them all?

BH: Okay, there's Martin, the oldest, Helen, my sister, Grant, and then myself, my sister Ruth, Sam, Dan, and Ted.

MA: And did you all help out on the farm?

BH: Yes, we did. In fact, when you're, no matter how old you are, when you're on the farm, there's always some kind of work that they can do. And everybody pitched in. It was a regular farm family operation.

MA: What types of crops did you grow on the farm?

BH: Mostly things like cauliflower, tomato, lettuce, celery, those were the big crops. And then they still raised other things like green pepper and carrots and whatever, the standard, something to fill the line. My dad used to take pride in getting more than one crop out of the field. Because when our tomatoes were growing, he'd plant the spinach and the, in between the rows so that he'd be using double, getting a double duty out of the farm that way.

MA: And where would he sell the, your produce? Where would he sell it? Who bought it?

BH: Oh, things like lettuce, cauliflower, celery, that was all crated and brought to the shipping companies right in Kent or Auburn, and then they'd ship it out to wherever. But the other stuff was pretty much the local market into Seattle. And beyond that, there were people that used to come over and buy vegetables from my dad in the bulk, but they'd take it to Eastern Washington to sell it. There'd be truckers that would buy it, and they had their regular customers that they took care of it.