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KP: So what are your earliest memories of growing up in Sacramento?

TT: Well, that's all I know is I had to do chores in the morning and chores after school. But when I was growing up, naturally, we lived on a farm, so my grandfather had a strawberry farm on Twenty-fourth, and we used to help on the farm picking strawberries or making boxes, whatever. Then we were there, I think, just before my mother died, I remember I thinned sugar beets out there at Woodland, (California). I must be about seven or eight when I thinned sugar beets. Then we went to grammar school, it was Lockenar School, if I recall, over there.

KP: So what do you remember about... so you were living with your grandfather's house?

TT: Yeah. We had a typical family, we more or less lived in different houses, live, huh.

KP: So your grandfather was the head of the household?

TT: Oh, yeah. He said, "jump," you ask him "how high"? [Laughs] You know, typical Oriental, his word was law. That's one thing that, when we went to camp, we lost that structure. Because, you know, like eating in the mess hall, the control was gone. You didn't have a family structure no more. I ate with my friends, we'd chase around. It was pretty sad.

KP: So Japanese was spoken in your house?

TT: When I spoke to my grandparents and my mother, I'd speak Japanese, but mostly all English. But with my, when we went to Tule Lake, we separated there, we went our way, we spoke nothing but English. Because everybody else understood English. But as long as we were with my grandmother and my mother when she was alive, we spoke both Japanese and English. But after they'd gone, spoke nothing but English. So you tell me, I could understand a little bit of Japanese, but speaking Japanese, forget it. [Laughs]

KP: So your mother died in 1932?

TT: 1935.

KP: '35. What were the circumstances?

TT: Oh, she had childbirth. You know where that UC Davis medical building, that used to be County Hospital, that's all I remember. She died in 1935.

KP: So how many children in your family?

TT: We had three boys, I mean, five of us. We had three boys and two girls.

KP: Starting with the oldest.

TT: I'm in the middle.

KP: Okay. So who was the oldest?

TT: My sister.

KP: And what was her name?

TT: She was, we called her, her name was Fumie, but Bessie's her American... and Bessie, then we had Tadashi, that's my older brother, or Johnny. And we had my younger sister, her name was Sumako. And then we had Masayoshi, my younger brother. We used to call him Jumbo because he was fat and plump when he was born. But he passed away, though. He passed away when he was only forty-nine. Diabetic, he had diabetes, and he didn't take care of himself.

KP: So what, what kind of Japanese community did you have? Did you go to Japanese language school?

TT: Yeah, for a while. But you had to pay extra money. So finally, I used to cut school, and I wasn't getting anywhere, so finally... you know, you have to pay extra for that. And back in the '30s, pretty rough. So I didn't last very long. I went to first and second grade, that's about it. That's why you tell me to write Japanese, forget it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.