<Begin Segment 7>

KL: So we've got another tape going. This is tape number two of a continuing interview with Minoru Yamaguchi on June 21, 2012. And we were talking about your village where the Ono family was from, and I wanted to ask you, how many people do you think lived in that settlement?

MY: At that time there were quite a few families. I'd say quite a few, must be about forty-five families. They're all engaged in farming and cattle. Except my mom's sister, who married to a cattle trader. He was almost working full time trading cattle, going around different people and market the already marketable cattle, and then he would bring a small calf to the family so that they will start feeding them again.

KL: Yeah.

MY: So that's about two year cycle. So once you bring in a small calf, then it'll take two years or so to become a marketable cow.

KL: Could he continue that work during the war?

MY: Yes.

KL: He was able to find cattle.

MY: So he was pretty well-known in the area, not only that village but the next village where my dad was born, and then others. My wife's from same region, but it's quite, I'd say about thirty miles south of where I grew up, and her family was involved in that trading, cattle trading business too.

KL: Maybe they worked together.

MY: Yeah. Well, they knew each other. My wife's dad and my uncle, they knew each other.

KL: What was the community center building like, where you said you'd go to crank the sirens? Did that have a thatched roof too?

MY: That's, well, the community center sounds pretty, pretty...

KL: A gymnasium and... [laughs]

MY: Yeah. But no, just a small, one room shack. They didn't have a thatched roof, though. They have a tile roof. But one room, just a building, with a tatami floor. Tatami is the rice mat floor. And then they used that community center for meetings, the villagers meet to discuss when they're gonna get together and they go up in the mountain to cut an underbrush, underbrush of the growth of redwood trees and all that.

KL: People cut underbrush as a group?

MY: People worked together, as a group. They always did that, not as individual, so they always cut together and then worked as a group. Which is, I think it was pretty nice. Even when the time to plant the rice in the rice paddy, instead of working individually, all the villagers got together and they helped. "Okay, one, this day or tomorrow, we're gonna plant Mokichi's, Yamaguchi's rice field." So all the villagers get together and then come, got the planting done in one day. "Okay, the following day, so we're gonna do such-and-such." So okay, so we did all that together, which is, I think that's pretty efficient way to get the job done. Because the timeframes of the plant, especially rice, is pretty much limited. I mean, you got to get it done in a certain period, like in June. You cannot wait one month from there to do it, because the rice plants need a high temperature, warm weather. Otherwise they won't grow. So they got it done in a certain time frame, so that's what the people did.

KL: Was there a church or a temple in the village?

MY: Pardon?

KL: Was there a church or a temple in the village?

MY: Oh yes, yes. The Japanese tradition, the man of the house needs to carry on the family affairs, especially the ancestors' memorial service, and make sure that he has to get that done. In other words, the person or his dad or whoever in the family passes on, well, then one year, need to go to the church, or temple, to have the service done. And that usually happens in every odd number of years. Okay, the first year goes, that's pretty important, and then followed was third year. One, three, and then after third year's memorial, you skip to seventh year. That's pretty important, seventh year memorial is pretty important, as far as Buddhism is concerned. And then after seventh year, thirteen, thirteenth year, and it goes so for so on. And if you don't do that, we always believe that the family's been cursed by ancestor's spirit. Like, you know what Obon is? Have you ever heard the name Obon?

KL: A little bit. I don't know a lot about it.

MY: Obon is the very important Buddhist holiday which occurs every summer, for three days, August 13th through August 15th. Well, we believed, in Buddhism, that the ancestors' spirits come home, actually come home to visit family in the house where they were born. So you might say that's homecoming for the ancestors, so we celebrate. You prepare food, and then we do the memorial service for them, and then after that we, family all get together and have good food and have a good time. That is Obon festival. That's what every church, even here, August, or sometime in July, everybody gets together and have a Obon festival. That's what it means. If you don't do it, we all believe that family will be cursed in some way. We don't want anything of that nature happening to us. We don't want that, so therefore we have to go through the, we feel that we should. So that is important things, so we always did that. We always went to the temple. And the day that we had the memorial service, the day that the person died -- in fact, my mother's, my mother died on June 25th, which is just four days from today, so we're gonna make sure that, we don't go to church here, but we have a portable shrine, the shrine here. Then we put incense and the flowers and little traditional pastry and then tea, and then ring the bell and then [clasps hands].

KL: On the anniversary.

MY: Every year we do that. And then every Obon we do that. Not necessarily, if necessary we go to the church here, temple here, but if you, I could go over there and do that, but since we have this portable shrine here, we do it at home. So as long as we do it, that's the most important thing. And in Buddhism, if you put the palm of your hands together and then [bows head] and then like this, your feeling will be connected to the person who's deceased. Like if I want to do it like this [clasps hands and bows head], my mother's anniversary, I'll go like this and my feeling will be connected with my mom, or dad. So that's pretty important for us. So, like every time we go fishing in High Sierra, we stop there at the Manzanar. Even if I am, if I didn't, if I don't know anybody that, knowing that someone's died there and there is a monument there, we go over there, pay the respect. That's what we do. I mean, we're kind of educated -- well, I don't know, our mom and dad and everybody did that, and we're seeing them do that.

KL: It's a connection.

MY: Yeah.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.