Densho Digital Archive
Japanese American Museum of San Jose Collection
Title: Eiichi Sakauye Interview
Narrator: Eiichi Sakauye
Interviewer: Jiro Saito
Location: San Jose, California
Date: February 8, 2005
Densho ID: denshovh-seiichi-01-0014

<Begin Segment 14>

JS: Now, it's been said that Japanese farmers designed or modified farm equipment for their crops. Are their any examples that you can describe of that type of activity?

ES: Well, yes. In the horse-drawn days, they would open up a new land, and the land would be hilly or have holes in the ground that has to be covered, leveled up. And they made, Japanese ingenuity made this Japanese land-scraper, which two horses pulled it, and the farmer stayed behind and moved the soil and have the land level, so the water will run from one end to the other and not saturate one end and dry the other end. So that Japanese scraper was one of the forerunners of the Fresno scraper. Fresno scraper was all right for taking the big chunks of dirt and then dumping into a low spot, but Japanese scraper, it's what they call a board scraper, which just refined the area and make it perfect table-flat. And that's been used for, until the wartime, and then by the wartime there came hydraulics, so it changed everything.

JS: Okay. Why didn't anybody else come up with this invention? [Laughs]

ES: Well, well, they did come with a boxed-in leveler, but it took a great area to turn that around. Well, this little board scraper, which I have in display at the museum here, is that it always does a beautiful job, and it doesn't take much space to turn around and make it level from one end to the other.

JS: Do you know who came up with this idea?

ES: I have no idea. They always said, "Japanese scraper, Japanese scraper."

JS: How did you find out about it, then?

ES: Well, everybody has them.

JS: Oh, okay.

ES: Regardless of 1 acre or 5 acres or 10 acres.

JS: Okay, so you found out about these things and you just adopted it for yourself.

ES: Yeah. Well, I have here in the museum, the original one that my dad made, 'cause it was made out of good grain of redwood, so it lasted a long time.

JS: Did you, did you or your father invent any such equipment, any equipment, or your father?

ES: No, there are a number of small inventions, in other words, the berry growers made their little pushcarts, and then the fruit growers made their own sackers. There are a number of things that growers had made to speed up their packing process.

JS: But how about yourself?

ES: Myself and other mechanic were interested, so my... let's see, orchard... forklift. That's when I came back from camp, and we did manufacture for other people 'til our surplus supply ran out, and also made pear grating machines 'til the food industry closed up in the valley here. And lot of little things that help to make work a little easier.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2005 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.