<Begin Segment 7>

RP: You were mentioning about how difficult times were during the Depression for not just your family but everybody. Did you see things change in terms of your economic situation a little later on in the late '30s and into the early '40s before the war?

RS: Yeah, in the early '40s, 1941, the farm got just a little bit better and everybody attributed it to the fact that more people were going into the army. The draft was being reinstated and so forth so more people were going into the army and therefore the U.S. government was buying more vegetables and things like that to feed the army. And so that trickled down to our farm and so we found it a little bit easier to sell the produce and so things had gotten a little bit better. It was late '30s and early '40s, but that was just gradually very slightly.

RP: Did you father always lease his land or did he, being an alien, he was ineligible to purchase land?

RS: He bought the land under my uncle's name. See my uncle, Tomiko's father, you see was a male and therefore he was a citizen whether he got married to anybody or not it didn't make a difference; he was a citizen. So the farm was in his name but it was our farm.

RP: Can you describe your living conditions on the farm?

RS: Well, quite primitive. Initially we didn't have running water, didn't have electricity, didn't have anything like that. I remember my father and my grandparents putting a big tank on the back of the truck that we had and going to a place not too far away which there was some water coming out of the ground through a pipe, and the water was always coming out. And going there and filling that big tank up and bringing it home and that's the source of our water. Also, he also put together a cistern system where the water that ran off the roof of the house went into a tank underground and then there's a pump on top. There also was, in front of the house there was a well with a motor, engine on it for a pump, but that engine, something was wrong with it and so it just never worked, so we never used that well. 'Cause you see we were on a hill, on top of a hill so the well had to be pretty deep so it had to have a really good pumping system to get the water up. So he did that cistern system or he went over to that running water source and got the water. Of course, all the heat and the cooking and so forth was done with stoves, wooden stoves and kerosene lamps.

RP: Did you have any specific chores around the farm or the house that you did?

RS: One thing, one of the things was to chop some wood to make kindling for the cooking stove. That's one of the things that was one of my chores, particular chores. Another one was to start the fire for the bath. We had a Japanese bath with the big round tank with the fire underneath it and you fill the tank up with water and set a fire underneath it and heat some water up. And in order to take a bath there was a raft you made, and getting in the tub you stepped on top of the raft and that raft went down and so you had this wooden raft at the bottom of that tank, and so you wouldn't burn your feet because the bottom was being heated with the wood fire. One of my tasks was to start the fire and fill the tank up and start the fire for the bath, you know. Another one was once in a while the neighbor had a bunch of cows and so of course he had milk, and one of our tasks was every day to go over and get some milk. We had agreement with the neighbor to get milk from there every day so every day we had to go up and get the milk.

RP: That was milk that was never pasteurized?

RS: Yes, that's right, raw milk.

RP: Raw milk how'd that taste?

RS: I can't remember how that taste, I can't remember how it tastes of course in those days you see that was milk so that was the normal taste of milk. It didn't taste abnormal to me so I guess I can't remember if there is anything different.

RP: Issei farmers in Oregon and California, Washington, made great contributions to agriculture in their states. Did your father, was he involved in any cross breeding of vegetable varieties or was he very innovative in some of his farming techniques at that time?

RS: I don't know how innovative, whether he participated in any kind of experiment that somebody else had suggested I don't know. I do know that his cauliflower was one of the best. Now whether... but I don't think it had to do with him developing that particular strain or variety but I know that the cauliflower he raised was really good. And that's not an easy thing to raise but he was really good at raising that. Now whether he'd gotten some seed company to give him some experimental stuff to begin with or not I don't have any idea.

RP: Do you recall how he fertilized his fields in those days? Were animal manure still used extensively or were chemical fertilizers?

RS: Well, he used a combination of 'em. He used commercial fertilizer but he also used to get bags and bags of sheep manure that's composted, and from somebody else. Of course we never had sheep but I remember he would get lots of bags of sheep manure. Of course we had a horse, we had some horses when I was young and so there was manure there, but not enough to really fertilize the whole farm you know.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.