Densho Digital Archive
Twin Cities JACL Collection
Title: Yoshimi Matsuura Interview
Narrator: Yoshimi Matsuura
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Bloomington, Minnesota
Date: June 17, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-myoshimi-01-0007

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Again, before the war now, just the Japanese community, I'm trying to get a sense of the community events, whether they were picnics or special events that the Japanese community...

YM: Yes, we, they used to have an annual picnic, went some location up by the river somewhere. And that was an annual event, but it wasn't really a big event. I think they stuck pretty much close to the group that they were associating with, and it didn't get too much involved in community type of things.

TI: Like this annual picnic, who would sponsor it?

YM: It was the community, it's the parents that got together and decided to go.

TI: And can you describe what would happen at these community picnics?

YM: Oh, they'd have the typical races and stuff, let the kids run around, let out some steam.

TI: Good, okay.

YM: Stay out of trouble.

TI: Other memories of growing up in Fowler? Any stories about you and your brothers that you can remember?

YM: Well, we did a lot of hunting. We had a rifle and shotgun, and we went out shooting jackrabbits and stuff, which, of course, we don't like to talk about now, but that was part of farm life. Hunting was part of farm life. And we went swimming, of course, into the canal, which was in the farm itself, running through the farm itself. So we would go swimming, which required no bathing trunks. [Laughs] It was a private, private pool. So that was our way of spending the summer. It was a carefree summer.

TI: So you mentioned earlier, so it sounded like a, yeah, like a rich childhood, swimming, outdoors, and you mentioned the hunting. But you said it maybe isn't correct to talk about the hunting. Why do you think that's the case, where hunting is viewed as something you don't want to talk about as much?

YM: I don't know. There seems, it seems like some people feel as though killing another animal or another bird is not the thing to do. We found that here in Minnesota, the people, friends that we have, they hate to hear things like that. But in California as we were growing up, we thought nothing of it.

TI: So that might be the difference between more of a farming or rural versus more...

YM: We were brought up with a gun right in the house there. That was part of our entertainment.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.