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TI: Okay, so let's, let's back up a little bit and, because you moved around quite a bit, to different places. Where was the first place you can remember living?

LH: Burbank. Well no, sorry, I take that back. When my father and mother got married they did domestic work in Los Gatos, way up on Overlook Road, way up in the hills, 'cause I've gone to visit it. It's a dead end road up -- well, it was, 'cause you'd go around a tree to come back -- and they worked for somebody that ran the bank in Los Gatos and my father, like I said, they did domestic work. I think my mother did, too, but for some reason we lived there until my grandparents decided to go back.

TI: And so around when you were four is when you...

LH: Probably about four, we moved to Burbank, to, on the farm.

TI: Okay, so you, your parents took over the farm.

LH: Farm. And my children would not believe what we lived in. I mean, the house had on one side the ofuro, and then I remember the cement hearth, you could call it, and then where you boil water with the metal grate and then, I think it was cement, then you put the wash pot here and heat the water up. And then the kitchen was dark and I think we had a two burner kerosene stove and a table over here with, I think, two benches, and then there was a storeroom over there and on this side was the living room and on that end was the bedroom, which was one room and there was a army cot, army cot, my brother and myself, and then a double bed. But the floor was about an inch think, but the holes between the boards were about like this, so my brother and I would go down there and see if anybody dropped any money down there. [Laughs] You know, when you're kids we do some funny things. And I remember when it rained we put the, they put the tin cans here and there. It was a hard life, but I've seen people live in worse places. You know, we were Japanese, the Japanese family... it's unbelievable, but survival.

TI: But growing up, did you have a sense that maybe you were, this was a hard place to live or that you were poor? Was that something --

LH: No. We don't know 'cause that's the only way we knew. We accepted, everything we did we accepted. We didn't, I don't ever remember anybody complaining. That was the beauty of the Japanese people. They were not complainers. It was survival. Anyway, and then we had Filipino workers. I think there was another building next and all I remember is it was really dark, so there must not have been too many windows, and then there was a big barn and the horse, but in the barn there was hay, there was a loft, and then they had these berry crates. In those days the berries were in crates that were about, oh, five or six feet long, maybe five feet long, and then the drawers were like this and the berries fit in the drawers and the drawers slid into these crates, and when the crate was full that was, they picked up the crate and brought it to the produce market. But anyway, those old crates were stacked up and then the workers slept on there with their blankets and their pillows and things. I think I remember that. And then on this side was all the bales of hay. And we had two apple trees, and for some reason my father had a swing there and my brother and I really had a good time on that swing, and eating green apples with salt on it. Those are the things I remember about Burbank. And one year, it was in the early '30s, it snowed. Must've been about two or three inches, that was really exciting 'cause I don't remember snow that much since. And we had a water tank and that year it froze, so you see these icicles hanging, so we grabbed that, break it off and suck on that icicle. When we, when we're children we do things that, spontaneously; what's there, we do and what we think we want to do with it. Anyway, those are good days. It was cold and everything, but I don't remember shivering like I do now in cold.

TI: Lily, those are, those are really great stories

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.