Densho Digital Archive - George Kikuta Interview (denshovh-kgeorge

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: I'm just curious, your father might have had some other ideas of what the Japan he was returning to was like. And then when he saw what was actually out there... I mean, later on, do you think he had any regrets about coming back to Japan?

GK: You know, I'm sure he had a, that feeling, but he didn't say it. And we, he had a pretty good life in Japan, again, he had land, and he was working for a U.S. army base located in Japan. So he had, he had a pretty good income coming from, for him. And food were plentiful from our own farm.

RP: You said you grew rice?

GK: Right. And we changed the rice field to apple and peach orchards, and so we, we had that going for us. We hired helpers, and my father was still working at the army base.

RP: What was he doing at the army base, George?

GK: He was bilingual, so he was doing some translation and secretarial, male secretarial type work, helping U.S. army officers.

RP: And how far away was this army base from your farm?

GK: Initially, it was just only a few miles from our house, and in a city, our city called Fukushima City. And they closed the base, and he moved to Sendai, which is about hour and a half by train. So he had to live separately from us, he had to live nearby on the base.

RP: Would he come back on weekends?

GK: Weekends or, you know.

RP: And his English skills, I imagine, were picked up while he was here in the United States.

GK: Right.

RP: So he could converse fluently in English?

GK: Adequately. [Laughs]

RP: Good enough for, good enough for the army.

GK: Right.

RP: Did your father's younger brother's family also live on the farm with you?

GK: Right.

RP: And what did he do? Was he just working on the farm, or did he also...

GK: I think he also worked at the --

RP: Base?

GK: Base, right. But he's the one that came back early, so I don't really recall exactly what he was doing.

RP: Another thing that you mentioned to me earlier was that you remember all your brothers and cousins coming down with this weird rash from the water?

GK: I suspect it's, you know, it must be different chemical in the water that caused rash all over our body, legs, arms. We were so itchy every day, I remember.

RP: Was this early on when you first got back?

GK: Yes, yes. I think it didn't last too long, but our other children had that problem. We had clean water, but somehow it didn't agree with our bodies.

RP: What was your, where was your water supply? Was it a spring or a well?

GK: Well.

RP: On the farm.

GK: Uh-huh. We had our own pump.

RP: And as you grew older, did you assume responsibilities on the farm as well as going to school?

GK: I say yes, but according to my mother, we didn't do too much farm work. They always hired, we had hired hands that helped do the farmwork. But I still remember weeding and doing some, water the vegetables and that kind of stuff. But must be, must be a few times a year.

RP: What was the, can you describe for us the landscape of the farm and the surrounding area? Was it a hilly area, was it a flat area?

GK: We were in the valley we call Bonchi, which is surrounded by mountains, but it's a flat area. And so most, rice fields were pretty good size, flat, and we didn't have to create... some of the mountainous area, they have to create step --

RP: Terraces?

GK: Rice terrace, but we didn't have to do that.

RP: You were right in the bottom.

GK: Right.

RP: Middle bottomlands.

GK: Yes. And we had clean water running from a mountain through us so we had plenty of water, resources.

RP: For the rice.