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TI: Okay, so let's go back to your father. And so you said he didn't use the money to go back to Japan, so what, what happened?

MH: Well, my father, after the second contract expired, my father decided to go to San Francisco. So he left Honolulu on April 18, 1906. Well, that's the day of the San Francisco earthquake. So when he gets to San Francisco a week later, it's in ruins. Now, I don't know what my father did the next few years. Now, he was a cook. On the plantation, he worked as a cook and had the ofuro, the bath, concession. And those who worked in the kitchen, not in the fields, had to work twelve hours a day, whereas the field workers worked ten hours. So my father, being a cook, I would imagine that he worked as a cook in a restaurant in San Francisco someplace.

TI: Okay, so let me, let me make sure I understand this. So back in Hawaii, he was paid the same as the field workers, but they worked a little bit longer, you said?

MH: They worked two hours longer.

TI: Two hours longer. But my, my sense is probably that was easier work than being out in the field?

MH: I think physically, it was easier work than working out in the fields.

TI: Okay, so he did that. And then you also mentioned he had the, the bath concession, the furo concession?

MH: The ofuro concession.

TI: So tell me as much as you know about that, that's interesting to me.

MH: I think there's a... okay, he made a bath, furo, and I think he charged people for using the bath.

TI: So the workers, as part of their, their monthly wages, $2.50 was taken out, the rest they were given in gold, and they could then spend however they wanted?

MH: Right.

TI: Okay. So things like furo and perhaps...

MH: They had to bring their own bedding. I remember in the contract it said they had to bring their own.

TI: Oh, that's interesting, yeah. Did you, by any chance, did you make a photocopy of this contract?

MH: I have a photocopy.

TI: That'd be interesting, I'd love to see that. That's good.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.