Densho Digital Archive - Alfred Miyagishima Interview (denshovh-malfred-01-0006)

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TI: And so did your older sister, older brother, did they have to help in the store? Or any of your siblings when you were growing up?

AM: There wasn't that much to do in the stores, but I think my oldest sister, on Saturdays, that's when all the farmers used to come into town and do stuff like that, and she used to come and help. But she, I think she graduated high school in '36 or '37 I think. Maybe '38, I can't remember. So '38, so then she took a job, I think she waited tables for just a little while, 'cause they always, there was a Japanese restaurant in town. It wasn't a Japanese restaurant, but it was owned by Japanese, they served mostly American fare, called the Eagle Cafe. And it was one of the better restaurants there right in downtown, and every once in a while they used to call and say they needed another, you know, somebody didn't show up, "Could Mabel come and help us for a while?" She used to like the tips, 'cause I remember, I remember when I was a little boy that on windy days in the wintertime, the wind would blow the door open and they couldn't keep it shut because of the fierce wind that would blow up here in the wintertime. So they used to call me and said, "Alfred, would you come and close the doors for us?" [Laughs] So I used to open the door and shut the door, open the door and shut the door.

TI: And this is at the Eagle, Eagle Cafe, where you would be the door-shutter, essentially.

AM: Yeah, door-shutter. And the waitresses used to give me gum and stuff like that. They used to treat me good.

TI: And that was your pay, just these little treats, or did they actually pay you to do this? It was just these gum and things like that? And going back to the store, who were the customers of the store?

AM: Mostly just the Japanese farmers from that area. I don't know the exact number of the Japanese farmers. I think there was some of kind of publication came out said there was fifty farmer families or whatever, I don't remember. But there was quite a few farmers all in that North Platte River Valley there, and they went mostly along the river, 'cause, of course, that's the most fertile land there is. I couldn't tell you how many, but there used to, my dad used to have the rice come in, and then he used to call the farmers and the farmers used to bring their trucks right up to the train station and load, load right from the boxcar right into their trucks. And some of 'em used to make ten or twenty bags of rice whenever it came in.

TI: So things like, for the Japanese families, things like banking and things like that, did they use the regular local banks, or how did they save their money and things like that?

AM: Yes, I believe my dad used to bank at the Scottsbluff First National Bank, I believe, and if I remember right, almost all the farmers used to, the Japanese farmers used to probably get their loans and stuff right there in Scottsbluff.

TI: How about, did your parents, do you know if they had to ever extend credit to the farmers? I think of farmers, and their income is sort of seasonal. And so when they buy the seeds and things like that, sometimes they would have to borrow or get things on credit and then pay after the harvest, things like that. Do you recall those kind of cycles that your parents had to do with the farmers?

AM: No, I really don't, but probably from experience I could tell you it's just an ongoing, ongoing thing. If the crops turned out good, like if they raised sugar beets for the sugar beet company, they would get paid on how much tonnage per acre, and they would all kind of get the most tonnage per acre. And I remember the farmers used to talk about, "So-and-so got 20 tons per acre," and everybody said, "Wow, that's pretty good," and then somebody would say, "Well, so-and-so up on the so-and-so place only got 14," and then they'd talk about sugar content of the sugar beets. And that also helped as far as how much money you would receive for your sugar beets, too, they would grade your sugar beets, how much sugar was in there and stuff like that. And if you hit it pretty good you didn't have to get a loan next year.