<Begin Segment 5>

AM: And you said you didn't have jobs outside your home, tell me what you did to help out the family. You had different chores?

JS: Well, we had to work on our farm, that's about it in those days. That's all there was, farm work.

AM: But you had some specific chores that you had to do. You talked about...

JS: Yeah, well, when you're a little kid, you're bath man, you had to get the bath ready, ofuro. They called it bath.

AM: And tell us a little bit more about the ofuro and what you had to do, 'cause that's...

JS: Well, it used to be every family had furo outside.

AM: That's a bath, right?

JS: The bathhouse, and you had to get your brush and wood or whatever you'd find, and every night you heat it up, and that's, that's your job, when you're a kid. And that was my job.

AM: You also talked about when you're eight years old, you had a cooking task to do. What was that?

JS: Yeah, well, I had to make rice when we were on the farm. And in those days, it was made, rice was made in a kind of a hibachi-like thing, you know. And that's, it used to be pretty good.

AM: So it was like, more like, almost like barbequing the rice?

JS: No, no, it's a big pot on the, with...

AM: Charcoal grill?

JS: Well, wood.

AM: Wood grill?

JS: Yeah, and that's, that was my job when I was a kid. That part I remember.

AM: Okay, and then as far as group activities that you participated in?

JS: Well, mostly, mostly it was judo and basketball, but not good at anything anyway, but we tried.

AM: You had fun playing with your friends.

JS: Yeah, yeah.

AM: You mentioned a Mr. Uchida? Uchida?

JS: Yeah, Yosh Uchida was, well, Mr. Tanimoto was our first teacher in Alviso, then Yosh was, Uchida was a student here at San Jose State College, and he used to teach us judo here at the Buddhist church, and that's...

AM: That was judo, and then the basketball, you were in some kind of club?

JS: Yeah, we belonged to the Nitto Club, yeah.

AM: Okay, and was your participation limited to Japanese American groups, or did you have other things?

JS: No, just in high school, too, a little bit.

AM: Some clubs in high school?

JS: Basketball and wrestling in high school.

AM: Oh, in high school?

JS: Yeah.

AM: Okay, good. And before your family was evacuated, what did you want to be or to become when you grew up?

JS: Well, anything but a farmer, that's about it. [Laughs]

AM: And, and the reason you didn't want to be a farmer was...?

JS: Oh, I hated farm work. That was hard work.

AM: You knew a lot about it because you had to participate and help out.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.