Densho Digital Archive - Fred Oda Interview (denshovh-ofred

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TI: So you mentioned, there's a group of you, mostly, like, sons of the business owners. Now, were there activities that you would do, like go on hikes or go out into the woods or anything, or the river, things like that?

FO: Yeah, we used to go down to the river and swim. To this day, my brother says, "It's sure a wonder we didn't get sick," because upstream, the creek, there's a slaughterhouse, and all that stuff comes down.

TI: And you'd be swimming just in that same water?

FO: Yeah, by there. And we used to have what they called first hole, second hole, third hole, depending on how the water was that time of the year. You know, as it gets shallow, we'd go to another place where there's more water.

TI: Oh, because the first hole would be too warm or something?

FO: No, that's the closest one from town.

TI: Oh, I see.

FO: And then as the river goes down, we'd go upstream or second hole, third hole.

TI: Oh, so when the river was higher, then you would go to the first hole, because that was more convenient there.

FO: Yeah. And the stream used to come right there.

TI: And how far would you have to go to these different holes? Like first hole, second hole, third hole...

FO: Oh, about maybe quarter of a mile, I guess, maybe.

TI: And so when you would do a, kind of a swimming outing, would this be, like for all day? You would go down to the river and swim...

FO: Yeah, well, not all day. Afternoon, I guess, because I think we all swam naked in those days, too. [Laughs] I don't think we had swimming suits.

TI: So you guys didn't have swimming suits, you guys just... it sounds like a --

FO: Then after we'd get through, we'd make a little fire and we'd go in the orchard and get apple and have roast apple. Or later, if the corn season, we'd get some corn and have roast corn.

TI: And so you'd just do this by the riverside right there?

FO: Yeah.

TI: And how many boys would be down there at the same time?

FO: Oh, maybe about ten, ten guys. Maybe less than that.

TI: And were they all about the same age, or was there kind of a...

FO: Yeah, about same age, yeah.

TI: It's kind of interesting in terms of the timing. Was there, like every -- what am I trying to say? Like a, was there a mini baby boom in terms of how many kids there were at your age? There seemed to be like a lot of kids your age, or was that true for every age group? If you looked at kids maybe four or five years younger, was there the same number of kids, Japanese kids? And in the same way, like four or five years older, was there about the same number of Japanese kids? Or did your age group --

FO: Well, you figure 1941 high school graduating class had the most Japanese.

TI: Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at. It seemed like it was --

FO: And I figure that because most of the "picture brides" came around 1920s, around there. So they came and started getting babies. [Laughs] So around that era, lot of kids were born.

TI: Okay, so there was probably a rush because the immigration stopped in 1924, so the early 1920s, there were a lot of "picture brides" that came.

FO: Yeah.

TI: And you're saying then a lot of kids were born in the early '20s, which would have made them all high school graduates in 1941, and that was the highest number.

FO: Yeah.

TI: So for Watsonville, there were lots of kids your age to play with.

FO: Yeah.

TI: That's good. That's interesting how sometimes when you have things like those laws or whatever, how they influence things like birthrates.

FO: Because yeah, after the war, the called them the baby boomers, huh?

TI: Right, exactly. It's a similar thing where...

FO: World War II.

TI: ...lot of people were born right after World War II.