Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0005)

<Begin Segment 5>

AL: What is your earliest childhood memory?

EO: My earliest childhood memory, there's a couple that really stands out in my mind. We'd have to back up a little. When we were in Tacoma, after I was born, and then John was born, then Sam was born, it was a little too much for our mother to take care of all three of us that close together. So she sent me to Seattle to live with her parents, so I lived with my maternal grandparents. And that's where my memory comes in. I remember my grandfather there, liked to go fishing. So he went fishing with his, you know, friends, that he would take. And I have recollection, very clearly, of going down to the wharves in Seattle and sitting there on the walkway of the wharves, warehouse type, and dropping the little line through the cracks -- which was probably about an inch wide with a little line sinker and the worm on the hook -- to fish for little porgies. And Dad and Grandfather and his friend would naturally fish for perch over the edge of the little walkway. But I was too young to be leaning over so I had to stick and fish for little porgies. Not... while they fished for the perch.

AL: What are porgies?

EO: Shiners.

AL: Okay.

EO: Little shiners... they're about this long. They look like baby, baby perch.

AL: And you were the only child they sent to your grandparents?

EO: Yes.

AL: What are your grandparents' names?

EO: Well, it was Goda, but I can't recall their first names.

AL: Okay.

EO: Yeah, I can't remember.

AL: And do you know what your grandfather's occupation was?

EO: No, I don't.

AL: Okay.

EO: I don't. I know he wasn't home during the daytime too much. Now, the other recollection I have very clearly of home is behind the house that we lived in, there was another house that was being torn down. And I remember standing in the house, looking out the back window. The window had been, glass had been removed. And I could look out and look up hill from there and see this bridge across this kind of a ravine with this street that we lived on running right up through it, underneath this bridge. On the left side of the bridge there was a dark red brick schoolhouse, schoolhouse like building. And that I remember very clearly. And I remember going out in the front yard and looking up and seeing the same one. But, it was something that struck me about that building being torn down and my standing in it and looking out... that it was just embedded in my mind.

AL: How old were you at the time?

EO: I was probably about four to five years old.

AL: Do you know what part of Seattle you lived in, your grandparents lived in?

EO: Yes. It was south of the main city part, kind of a, if you would, call it a business district. We know further down the street, probably a number of blocks, I would say maybe six blocks, seven, was the Union Pacific Railway station. And from there we had to go from the station little further south, a few blocks, and then up the street, slightly uphill to where we lived. I can't remember the name of the street but...

AL: That's okay.

EO: Remember the, the bridge and remember the schoolhouse.

AL: You have a great memory.