Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0010)

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EO: Okay, and now, while we were on Vashon, I remember moving from the one house on Vashon to another place up on the little town of Vashon, to the east. We lived there for a while. I remember going to the Vashon grade school at that time, and I remember some of our neighbors. And then from there we moved to a place in, place called Quartermaster. And we lived there for a short period of time, did a little farming there. We had a Japanese neighbor across the street. Name was Ichikawa, he was a single man, he was farming. And I remember, as about a seven or eight year old, I would, I ended up on the field weeding some of the, in some of the row crops. There I went to Burton grade school. Then we moved to another place up there on the island, west of the main highway going north and south. I think it was also considered Vashon. But it was a small place. I remember some of our neighbors, Marshall was one. Then they had... parents, would have been... their son, Bob, grandfather. And they had some dairy cows and they gave us skim milk. 'Cause they would use this, the skimmer to take the cream off for butter or whatever. And the skim milk would be of waste to them, so they would give us that. And I was going, at that time, to Center grade school, Center grade school for a while. I remember walking to school -- the high school and grade school were rather close together. And I walked to school then one day with Bob Marshall. He was older, he was going to high school. And he had -- there again I remember the darnedest little things -- I remember he had a little jacket with a zipper. And I remember one question I had asked Bob is, "Will a bullet go through that zipper?" 'Cause it was a metal zipper.

And then from there... oh, I remember, while we were living Vashon and also there at Center, Dad met a, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, name was Tom Dunn. And Tom was a very kind-hearted fellow. He had lost an eye in the war, and so I guess he was living on some kind of a military pension. But he stopped by quite, every so often. And one day he gave each of us a quarter. And a quarter was a lot of money then. And he said for us to, "Go ahead, spend it on whatever you like." So we went up to this, ran up to the store, and I remember buying a Hersey bar. It was about a one-pound bar then, Hersey's. And we never got candy like that before and so it was a real treat. It was so good that we ate that, or I ate that candy bar until I got sick. I didn't eat all of it, but I got sick. And that cured me from eatin' too much chocolate at one time.

Another thing I remember, Dad had sent us to our nearest church. It was a Methodist church. He'd give us a penny to put into the offering at Sunday school. It was Sunday school then. And every so often we'd be typical boys. On the way there in the little town of Vashon there, there was a little candy store. And so we'd look at the penny, we'd look at the candy, and we were tempted at times. And so, because of the temptation, we went in the store and bought a tootsie roll for a penny. That time, the tootsie roll was about this long. It was pretty good size, and about as big around as maybe a little larger than a pencil. And buying that for a penny. And then the other penny we would put in the offering at Sunday school. Darnedest thing we would remember.

AL: Just to back up for a moment, about what year did you move to Sumner, do you remember?

EO: Sumner, I was probably about six years old then. Six, maybe six and a half.

AL: So, around 1930.

EO: Yeah, '30, '31.

AL: And what year, what year did you move to Vashon?

EO: It would have been the following year after that. And that was, I was still in about the first grade, I believe. First, maybe just entering second.