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TI: Let's go to your mother, then. So your, your father was in L.A., he came up to marry your mother, but before we talk about their marriage, tell me a little bit about your mother's family.

LH: Alright. My mother's maiden name was Miura and her father's name was Tokujo and her mother's name was Kame, K-A-M-E, Kame. And they came here, leaving my mother in Japan with her grandmother, and so my mother was quite young, I think, when they left her, and they came, immigrated here and then my uncle and his brother were born here. And eventually they ended up in San Jose on Burbank, where Lincoln High School is now, and they farmed, I don't know, it was quite a bit of acres, I would say about maybe ten acres. And so it covered on Wabash to the edge of Burbank, anyway, to the back where Lincoln High School, that was all farm and surrounded by houses and school on one side, on the west side, and then on the south side was the peach orchard, next to the grammar school was the peach orchard that fronted on Bascom. And there was a cannery there, the Di Fiore Cannery, and that peach orchard was part of that cannery. And so further down, going towards Race Street, Race Street? Not Race Street, it's another one. Well anyway, going towards San Jose would be another, more orchard, was prune orchard, and then next to that it was Park Avenue. On the corner of Naglee and Park they built Hoover Junior High School. I remember when they built that. And then where the rose garden is off of Naglee used to be a peach orchard, and they tore down the peach orchard and I remember my parents going over there, walking over there and getting all the branches for ofuro. In those days most Japanese in the farm had ofuro, not American bathtub, so they used the wood to burn, to heat the water up.

TI: Lily, your memory is amazing. You can remember all these places and what was there before. Going back to those ten acres your family had, or your mother's family, so it was ten acres, did you say grapes that they grew?

LH: No, no. They had, they had loganberries. I remember a patch of loganberries, and that was the only berry we had, but all around, surrounding it we had bell pepper, they had radish, they had cucumbers, squash, bell peppers, probably beans, different kinds of vegetables because they'd rotate, but it was, it was to me at the time, I was little, but driving by there, it, it covered a little bit of ground, but the two of them, and then we had a horse. There was a barn and we had the horse, I think it's name was Molly, and I remember him plowing. In those days you have one horse and one plow, so it takes a while to... and I remember the ground like this. Anyway, and looking back they really had to work hard. It was, I'm sure, 'cause we were little, but my job was to wash rice, when I got old enough. That was my job. My brother's job was to heat up the ofuro water. And that's the only work I remember doing when I was little.

TI: So let's, let's talk now a little bit about your mother and father coming together. You said it was arranged, baishakunin?

LH: Yes, Mr. Kumataro Takeda. Everybody knows him in town, did know him, our generation.

TI: And you mentioned your father was about thirty-five, and so your mother was, was quite a bit younger than your father?

LH: They were ten years apart. She was twenty-five. And...

TI: Explain, I think when we last left your mother she was still in Japan.

LH: She was.

TI: So how did she get to the United States?

LH: Well, according to people in Japan, they told me that she was getting to be a teenager and they felt that she should be near her parents because I guess when you get to be teenager, I don't know if they were having problems, I don't think so, but they felt that she should go be with her parents, so they sent her to here to be with her parents. And then my grandparents must've been doing fairly well because they sent her to a sewing school, I think in San Francisco because we have a picture of her graduation. She had on a sort of a beige crepe dress and it had beads on it, and at that time her hair was short and it looked like she had a perm, but when I grew up with her she always had her hair long and in a bun. That's how I remember her when I was little. And you know when they work they wore that white dish towel around their head and then they put the hat on? You don't remember what we all do, 'cause all the mother's did the same thing. They kept their face covered because they didn't want to get dark, I guess, and they wore the teori on their hand. Have you ever seen those?

TI: I've seen pictures of them.

LH: Right. It goes, covers here and then they tie it and elastic here [points to elbow] to keep it up. But that's the way most of the mothers were when they worked on the farm. And like I said, we were very poor because the Depression, and I remember my father going to Burbank, there was a Safeway there and he used to go trade vegetables for bacon, scrap bacon and that's what we, my mother used to chop it up little and make okazu with the vegetables we had, and it's, to this day it's an inexpensive meal, but it's very healthy. That and round steak was, my father bought ten cents a pound or whatever. Anyway, you get a big round steak and you don't see those things very much anymore.

TI: That's interesting, it's kind of a barter system where he would take his produce, go to Safeway and trade for things like scrap bacon.

LH: Yes. Right, and in Japantown, the Dobashi market was there and I remember the book, the sales book and I think my father used to buy on credit, and I don't think he was the only one. The Dobashi's were very good at that. But I do remember that when we came back my father did go over there to pay them back.

TI: This is after the war?

LH: After the war, and I think they released them from that. Somehow that stuck in my mind how generous they were, the Dobashi's, but I'm pretty sure that that's what happened because it just stuck in my mind.

TI: Going back to your mother's family, with their, sort of, farming, who were their customers? Who did they sell the produce to?

LH: You know, I don't know. I must've been about four because I barely remembered them going back to Japan. The funny thing is the only thing I could remember about is a dish, one dish that was about this big and it was like this. I don't know why that stuck in my mind, but I try to think, what do I remember about them? But I don't. It's sad.

TI: Okay, so let's go back to your mother. You talked about your father and how he was sort of like a gentle man and never raised his voice. What was your mother like?

LH: My mother's the one that raised us, and I turned out to be just like that 'cause my husband was just like my father. [Laughs] Isn't that funny? So I was the one that was screaming and yelling and trying to keep the children in order and make them behave and work hard. I think about it all the time and I thought if I had to do it over again, would I do the same thing? I don't know. But they, they're all hard workers because they know how to work. I was not easy on them at all.

TI: But in the same way, then, your mother wasn't easy on you? I mean, she, she was... had you work really hard?

LH: Well, she never drove me like I drove my children, because they did all the work, and like I said, my only job I remember was washing, washing the rice, and when we got old enough my brother and I -- by this time we moved to, on Fruitdale Avenue in San Jose near the county hospital and we took over the ranch of another family that went back to Japan. They made their money and they went back with their family, and so we took over that ranch until the cherry trees... what happened was a lot of times the landlord would plant an orchard and while the trees are small they planted berries in between, and so in this case it was raspberries, so that's what my brother and I picked. And I don't know how old we were. We must've been ten, twelve, and this was after we moved back from Alviso. We moved over to Fruitdale Avenue and picked berries. That's all I remember doing is berries and washing rice, until the war started.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.