Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Taeko Joanne Iritani Interview
Narrator: Taeko Joanne Iritani
Interviewer: Kirk Peterson
Location: Sacramento, California
Date: October 17, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-itaeko-01-0003

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KP: So after your father got married in Tokyo, came back, and went back to Bakersfield, was he still working in the railroad at that time?

TI: No. He, that's when he decided he would go into farming, but he had to learn about it first. And that's why he lived like a bachelor and left his wife and child, maybe both boys already by then. But I remember my mother saying she was so lonely, she says, "What did I come over here for? To be left alone."

TI: How long of a time period was that?

TI: I'm sure it wasn't too long, maybe a couple of years. And then he got the job of gardener, and then he decided to find some land to work himself. And he was a successful farmer. We lived in the east side when I was a little girl, three years old is when we moved to Lamont area, east side of Kern County, fifteen miles east of Bakersfield. And my father farmed forty acres, a wonderful landlord we had there. And he grew sweet potatoes and yams, cantaloupes, cucumbers... well, in addition to cantaloupe, Persian melons and casaba. The casaba I have not seen... it was very fragile. But that was the best-tasting melon I've ever had. Can't find it anymore. And the casaba you see now doesn't taste like that at all.

KP: So what are your, what are your earliest memories of that area?

TI: That area when I was a little girl?

KP: Lamont area.

TI: In Lamont, my father farming. Of course, I didn't start school until I was first grade, six years old. And then we had to walk at least a quarter mile to get to the bus stop. And we went to Bakersfield to our little Japanese Methodist Episcopal mission, which later was called a church. And we had a wonderful, wonderful Caucasian lady who had come to our church in 1927, so before I was born, she was already teaching Sunday school. That was Emma Buckmaster. She was the most wonderful person, Christian person, I've ever known. She... I remember her playing her mandolin, and we had an old pump organ in the little room in the, behind the church, and I learned all my little Christian songs at that time. And even now, when I hear recordings for some of those old hymns played, I think of her. She was just wonderful. And skipping to the time of evacuation, she was the mainstay of our, to help our Japanese community then. But before that, before we get there...

KP: Right, before we get there... so you had older brothers.

TI: My two older brothers.

KP: And an older sister.

TI: And an older sister.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.