Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George T. "Joe" Sakato Interview
Narrator: George T. "Joe" Sakato
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-sgeorge-01-0009

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: I wanted to actually go back a little bit about the barber. Any, any interesting stories about your mother and father cutting hair that you can remember? I'm just curious about if you can remember anything about that.

GS: Nothing different about hair, cutting hair. But my father used to, he had a fish pond, we had three fish ponds, goldfish, fantails and all the different type of goldfish we had. We even had eels swimming in one pond and various other ponds. We also had rabbit hutch, rabbit pen, and ducks, chickens. And we had, backyard had a grape arbor, had to, underneath we had cars was parked underneath this fence, grape. And Dad used to tell us, "Don't eat the green grapes." Those grapes looked pretty good, you know, so I climbed up the fence and I was eating the green grapes, pretty soon I hear the back door slam, "Oh my god, my dad's coming out." So I jumped, but I didn't know where I was jumping, I didn't look down. There was a rake with a, on the ground, and the things were sticking up, I landed on top of that rake. The handle came up and hit me in the head, penetrated my tennis shoe, bachi. [Laughs]

TI: So did he have to also take you to the doctor because of that?

GS: He had to take me to the doctor.

TI: So Joe, I'm getting the sense that growing up, you always didn't follow directions.

GS: Nope. [Laughs] We used to play hide-and-seek in the backyards and kick-the-can and everything, and we used to play ball. And like I say, when we were out the ballfield and the open lot, and this bum was trying to cross the railroad tracks and he couldn't wait for the train to stop. When he stopped, well, he'd get on and try to cross on the other side. Then the train moved, jerked and he lost his balance and fell in between the wheel. When we got there, me and my brother pulled him out, cut his legs off. We didn't know what to do so we had to call the police department. By the time the ambulance came over and took him to the hospital, he lost too much blood. So that's when I first saw blood when I was a kid.

TI: And how, how old were you when this happened?

GS: Nine years old, 1930. Also in 1930 they had an earthquake, and I'm out in the middle of the field, the street, and pretty soon I couldn't stand. And the pepper trees are going like this, shaking like this, and "What's going on here?" I couldn't and the brick from the top of our building was falling down, earthquake. So that was the first time I ever went through, lived through an earthquake.

TI: So these are all things that happened when you were in Colton.

GS: That was, I was only nine years old then, that's in Colton.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.