<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Let's talk about your childhood in Brawley. What was that, what were some memories of Brawley growing up?

IS: It's not a... it's something very minor, but it's mentioned in the book where I stop on a nail. But I remember it, and I remember we put in the book. We, I say "we" because my spouse, although she's Japan-born, she's the one that did all the editing and everything. So she helped me write a lot of it, and she puts it in about I step on a nail, and my father comes into the room because I can't sleep because it hurts. And he carries me outside, and it must have been not cold winter but warmer weather, and he takes me outside and he looks at the stars. And he used to like stars, and we used to have, I still remember we used to have two or three telescopes that he used to look through, and he would explain the stars, which I don't even remember what he was teaching me, but he would point out what the stars were. And then another thing I remember about childhood is we used to go on vacations every summer.

TI: But before we do that, so he took you out because you couldn't sleep and it was hurting, and so he would just carry you and then just talk with you and just talk about the stars?

IS: Yes.

TI: So he was probably trying to take your mind off the...

IS: I guess so, yes.

TI: And just trying to comfort you in some way? Okay. And then another story?

IS: And another... Imperial Valley had what they called a geological... different things. Like they used to be, I don't know what they were, but in Imperial Valley there was, they called it Chocolate Drops, where they were, out in the desert, there would be this dark-colored mounds that, they're sort of like Hershey's Kisses, but high. Must have been like, oh, a hundred feet or so high, things like that. And then near the Salton Sea they had what they called the Mudpots, where there was... it was bubbling. It's not quite like...

TI: Oh, like the old geyser?

IS: Yeah, not like that, but...

TI: But still it's the underground heat.

IS: Right, exactly. And I remember he used to take us to those places on Sunday afternoon a lot, and then this was before we did things with friends, I guess. We still had to have the parents look after us, so he used to, on Sunday afternoon after church, he would go out to places like that. And that used to, I used to enjoy those things. And then as we got older, he used to always go to the mountains when, during vacation. But when we were getting older and we had, we were, started having our own ideas where we should go, we always went to the ocean. And for about a month, you can't do any farming or anything, and it became very hot in Imperial Valley, so not only us, most of the Japanese families did abandon their living in Imperial Valley and go to places like San Pedro, Terminal Island, or San Diego, Ocean Beach, Mission Beach. There we spent our summers.

TI: And when you say hot, do you recall how warm it got when you were a kid?

IS: Well, we used to say 120, I mean, I don't think it actually happened, but they would say like you could crack an egg on the highway, on the pavement, you could cook it. But it was dry heat, so like 120, but you get in the shade, and if there's a little breeze, you could survive. And jumping far ahead, I don't mention that in the book, but the coldest I saw in Siberia, I didn't actually see it, but on a night shift, when I was working in the coal mine, night shift meaning, what's the one from four to twelve?

TI: Like graveyard?

IS: Graveyard shift. So at twelve o'clock midnight, you're over, and then we would change our, what we were wearing to go back to the camp. And I remember on one of those shifts, coming through the gate, the prisoner next to me said, "Oh, it's minus-63," and that's centigrade. [Laughs] And then when you figure that, that's almost like minus-80. And so I thought, and I have mentioned that to people, that I've been in temperatures 200 degrees different. 120 to minus-80. [Laughs]

TI: That's pretty impressive.

IS: But, so it was hot, and no farming. All the crop is the cantaloupe crop. I don't remember any of the other things like strawberry or having cattle. That I don't even remember. But the cantaloupe crop I remember, and that was over, like, Fourth of July it would all be over. So from there 'til September, when the new school year used to start, you had a couple of months there. And we would usually spend a month away from home by the ocean.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.