<Begin Segment 10>

RP: What was your diet like? Were there obviously a lot of vegetables?

SK: Yes, what they call okazu. Yeah, that was like meat and vegetables, very small slices of meat with a lot of vegetables and soy sauce and sugar. I think it's kind of like the teriyaki sauce. Or now what they call it would be pan fry, wok, you know, the Chinese style vegetable cooking. There was a lot of that, because while I don't think they could afford to buy meat, meat was pretty expensive, but vegetable was plentiful, easy to get. We did eat a lot of vegetables.

RP: And rice?

SK: Yes, rice was a staple. There was rice with every meal except breakfast. I mean, they did cook fried rice when there was an abundance of rice leftover.

RP: You mentioned early on, you had a great story about you falling off the Caterpillar, so your father eventually did have equipment, machinery?

SK: Oh, yes. He had, no, no, they always had a Caterpillar, and they had a... I don't know what you call those other ones with the wheels. They had two tractors, and Dad, I remember the one time when their Caterpillar broke down, he tore the whole engine apart and fixed it up and everything. He also had a big, I don't know if it would be considered big now, but he had a flatbed truck, which was all put in a, I mean, the barn was a pretty good size. But yes, he did have equipment.

RP: Also horses, too?

SK: I'm sorry?

RP: Did you say that he had horses, too?

SK: Yes, they had horses. And when they took care of the strawberry portion of it, they didn't use the tractor, they used the horses to cultivate the ends between the rows. That's right, Grandpa was the one that did that. Yeah, he was the one, right, with the horse. The I guess if they had a vegetable garden, he would be the one to plow up the vegetable garden with the horse.

RP: Did you grow Japanese vegetables that you can recall?

SK: God, I don't know, but I imagine so. They probably grew what they called daikon, you know, the big long thing, I don't know what they call it in English. I don't know if they grew any of the Japanese food, but they probably did. Because most of the farmers during that time would grow their own vegetables.

RP: Another one that's been mentioned that was grown on farms was gobo?

SK: Oh, gobo, yes. You got a better perspective than I do, gobo is one of those... I don't know if that was considered a staple or what, but a lot of Japanese people did eat a lot of gobo. They sliced it very thin and cooked it different ways, but most of the time it was cooked with soy sauce. I guess it was one of those vegetables that actually came from, or originated in Asia someplace.

RP: How did the strawberries taste on your farm?

SK: [Laughs] Well, you know, that's the thing. I can't say that they were really great, I don't know, I don't remember, that's all. I remember they grew every year, I mean, it was harvested every year and they actually packaged it up in those boxes and shipped them out. So they had a buyer for 'em.

RP: And somebody had to make the boxes, too?

SK: Yeah. Well, you know what, yeah, that's right.

RP: Did your dad do that?

SK: You know, I believe they did. Because they didn't buy 'em premade at that time, I think they bought the material and put 'em together. I think you're right. All that I think was all stored, the parts were all stored in the barn.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.