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RP: And where did the family live in Portland?

LK: The grandfather?

RP: Your family.

LK: I'm not sure, because like I say, we moved out to Troutdale when I was, before I started school, so I don't know where we lived. But I do know that my dad and mom, at first, my dad worked for the railroad, my mother worked for the newspaper. She would be a typesetter, you know, where they pick up the kanjis to put the word together. But after a few years, I remember my mother telling me that they would go out into the country to work together, and I would have to go with them, of course, and worked out in the farm. And then I think my father's father, the Sakurai, had a farm in Troutdale, which he gave to my dad. Said, "It's about time you settle down," I think that's maybe that's what I said, I don't know. But he said that they had a farm out there that he would give to my dad and mother. That's how they got the farm in Troutdale, part of it. And then my dad bought part of it, too. The initial one was he got some land from his father.

RP: What are your earliest memories about the farm?

LK: Not very much. I don't really remember too much about the farm. I remember the house and the acreage, and I remember going to school some. But my memories of the farm, I don't have too much. We used to play out in, we had a big field in front, and we used to play after the harvest season was over, we would be given the freedom to play out in the farm. We played baseball or kickball or everything out in the field. And I remember working and helping my dad do whatever we can, pick berries. I do also remember that my mother was sickly a lot, so I had to help in the house a lot and I took care of my brothers and sister. I was the oldest. But the memories are not all bad. There were some probably happy times. We got to play as children, but I do remember helping my mom a lot, too.

RP: With the chores?

LK: Yes, yes.

RP: So you picked strawberries?

LK: Yes.

RP: How did those strawberries taste?

LK: Wonderful. Compared to what we have now, the strawberries in those days were a more delicate strawberry, I think. They weren't market quality kind, you know, where they're kind of hard. These were soft and tasty, so yeah, they were good strawberries.

RP: Large or small?

LK: Yeah, small, or large.

RP: So you would, would you put 'em in small boxes?

LK: Yes. We would get them ready for market, but sometimes when we had people come and help us pick. They would go to the cannery, and the difference between a cannery berry and a market berry was the market ones you left the stems on, whereas the cannery ones you'd have to take the stems of, the little stem on the thing, you'd take the stem off it, those were going to the cannery. So a lot of people that we hired, we sent them to the cannery because they were not as easy on the berries, and they would kind of smash them a little bit because they were soft and so they would go to the cannery.

RP: Was there a cannery nearby?

LK: Yes, there was a cannery in Gresham.

RP: So you would hire extra labor.

LK: Uh-huh, to pick berries.

RP: And who would those people be? Were they local people?

LK: Yeah, most of them were local people, I think. My dad always had a, what he called a hired man. We had a little shed-like thing where they would live. Usually had one or two, they were usually maybe Filipinos maybe, or fellow Japanese, elderly -- not elderly, but a single man, and they came to work around the farm because my dad couldn't do it all. And my mother never worked on the farm.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.