Densho Digital Archive - Taeko Joanne Iritani Interview (denshovh-itaeko-01-0004)

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KP: Did the whole family help out with the farm? Do you remember that?

TI: No. Well, we have some pictures of my brothers driving the truck when they were nine, ten. [Laughs] And out on the field, I guess you can do that with a little child. Yeah, my oldest brother was born in 1925, the year after. In fact, he was born on my mother's first birthday in America. She was in heavy labor. And then Joe was born the year after, year and a half or so, and then Tomi was born in 1928, and me in 1929, and Takashi in 1932. Of course, as little children, I guess we didn't do much as far as farming goes. But I remember how in the summer we would be... I learned how to straighten out a nail very well. I could still do that. Because we would be hammering the crates together for the, either the lug boxes or the crates for the melons. And they were all shipped, well, taken by the produce people. They'd come from town and take it down to the farmer's market in L.A. My father would go early in the mornings to the farmer's market down in Bakersfield in town. And I remember as about a fourth-grader, I guess, maybe third, having to listen to the radio. That was one of my jobs, to listen to the radio every morning before I went to school, for the stock quotations. My father had purchased -- and I don't know how he learned about it, but there must have been an Issei or Nisei person who knew about buying stocks. So that's how my, our father had used his extra money. And I listened for Warner Brothers and Trans-America and SP.

KP: Sounds like he kept our connection with the railroad, because of the stock. [Laughs]

TI: Well, but this was SP and not Santa Fe. And another job I had, probably in about fifth grade, was to make the bathwater hot. I don't know if you're familiar with Japanese furo, bath buildings behind the house. There was a tub made of metal, probably galvanized tin or whatever, and with the raft kind of thing in it so we don't burn our feet on the metal. And under it, from the outside, you build your fire and make your hot water hot enough for the father to get in. It had to be hot. And we had yams, which I loved to put into the coals of that, the fire underneath. That was one of my jobs, to keep the bathwater hot. Oh, and also to do the, especially in the summer, to make the rice. I would... and at that time, we didn't have these automatic cookers, we just made our rice in the big pot and put it on the stove and turned it down at the right time. Well, I wasn't too good at that because I was too busy listening to "Amanda of Honeymoon Hill," and some other soap operas. So sometimes I did burn the rice. But my sister helped my mother with the cooking, and I was more apt to help with the dishes later.

KP: Speaking of burning the rice, what was your, what was your relationship with your parents? Were they strong disciplinarians, were they approachable people? What kind of relationship -- what do you remember about your father? What was he like?

TI: Well my father played games with us. I remember playing hopscotch. I remember jacks, and I could beat him in jacks. And we used to have a karuta set. Karuta is a Japanese card game where the cards would have old poems on it, and people who are really familiar with it can have the first part of the poem read, and already know what the second part is and where that card is. Of course, we didn't know that much, but we could read the, the characters because we went to Japanese school on Saturdays. And so we waited for that, and as soon as you spied it, you pointed to it and touched it. That became your card. So they would play games with us like that. And oh, I remember those summers. Probably before 1940, I must have been in fifth and sixth grade, I got to sit in on the game of 500, and I made the "no trump" hand. And I could still envision my being there. And we were playing not just against my parents, but the men who had come to work that summer, Nisei men who had come to work that summer on our farm, and I got that "no trump" hand. [Laughs] Isn't that ridiculous? But anyway, we enjoyed things like that.

KP: So your father wasn't particularly strict or anything that you remember?

TI: Well, he was more strict with my oldest brother, I think, than he was with us. And my mother would scold, but I don't remember any spankings. But then maybe that's what that's for; you forget.