Densho Digital Archive - George Uchida - Leo Uchida Interview (denshovh-ugeorge

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with George Uchida and also his brother Leo. We were talking a little bit about your father's farm and what you did on it. George, did you do any farm work or you said you were just too young?

GU: No, I was the lucky one. My two, two things I do remember doing, contributing my time to it was, one, was to, we had the old fashioned large tub, like a community tub. And I had to get the water warmed up by the time they were ready to come home from work. So that was one of my jobs, to heat up the tub water. And the other one, I cooked rice. We had a fireplace, and because of the large family, we had a tub like this with rice in it. And my sister next to me and I would cook, make the rice for the dinner. In regards to the rice, my father bought 100-pound bag of rice, I don't know how often. But we had two or three bags all the time in the storage. We always, we all ate rice.

RP: Did you have farm animals, too? You said you had horses, did you have cows or chickens?

GU: We had two work, two work horses, and we had chickens. And my brother David was mainly responsible, he took care of them. And we had a dog now and then. I don't remember particularly having any cats.

LU: Huh?

GU: Any cats.

LU: No.

GU: But Elmer had gotten a dog, a collie brand. So other than that, we didn't have any farm animals. No rabbits, just chicken was the only other, except for the work horses.

RP: Did your father have any mechanized equipment, tractors?

LU: Yeah, a tractor, and he had numerous plow, and I guess they call it harrow, disc, there's a bunch of disc in it and pulled it with a tractor.

RP: You also used the horses, too?

LU: Yeah, I think he used the horses mainly for plow, to do the plowing, to make the ditch to water. I remember he, once in a while he'd really cuss out the horses. [Laughs]

RP: They understood Japanese? Where did the water come from? Did you have your own well?

LU: Yeah. He had a well dug, and I guess it was pretty deep. I know he had a ladder for them. There was a pump in the bottom, so every once in a while he had to do something, so he used to go down there. And then there's a tank tower on the side there, and as the water come up, there's a pipe that came out, little pool, and then that would go into another pool. And this pool was like a swimming pool for us, and the water would go through there. And then to fill the water tower, he would cap this and then the water would go up to the water tower to fill up the tower. And I remember one winter, he went fishing, and he forgot to, he forgot to fill the water tower. And so, and then we had a storm, and the wind knocked the water tower down. I guess if it was full of water it would have stayed, but without that water in there, it collapsed.

GU: I don't remember that.

RP: You used to swim in that little tank?

LU: Yeah, there's a little tank and then a big, like a rectangular pool. And somehow, they got some big old carps, and there was about three or four carps in there. We used to chase it around. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't real deep, but then it was... I know some of the neighborhood kids used to come to swim in there.

RP: And that was your drinking water, too?

LU: Yes, from the well.

RP: And did you also have electricity and indoor plumbing?

LU: Yeah. We had electricity, and the water to the house, but we didn't have any toilet in the house, it was outdoor, outhouse.

RP: Only running water was for the kitchen for cooking and things like that.

LU: I guess the water tower is up there, so just with gravity, you feed the, in the kitchen.

RP: So your farmhouse, was it large enough to accommodate a big family?

LU: Well, like you said, you have several buildings. And from the main house, there was another building, like a dormitory, for the older brothers and a cousin, they slept over there, and then older sisters and I guess me on down, we stayed in the main house to sleep at night.

GU: And we had a kitchen, dining room, parlor, and three bedrooms.

RP: So when we get towards the outbreak of the war, the attack on Pearl Harbor, how is your father doing financially, do you recall?

LU: Well, by that time, like I said, he'd been raising this grape for a long time, and I think... it seemed like every year, the crop would go down, down, down. And he, like I said, we had about several acres of strawberry. He rented another location about five acres for strawberries. And even then, I guess it was a struggle for him. And when the war broke out, I guess, I don't know, I'm guessing, but maybe to settle a lot of the debt, he had to sell those farms. And he was able to sell it. And you know that 50-acre farm with all the buildings and farm equipment, he got five thousand dollars for it. And I heard that... oh, this couple from Oklahoma, they bought it. And a year later, I heard they sold it for ten thousand to somebody else.

GU: Yeah. When the war broke out, my father had already planted young grapevines. And when we had to evacuate, that year, the first crop started to come out. And my understanding that I heard later on was that the family that bought the farm, they were no farmers at all. They just harvested what was there. And I understand they made a small fortune out of those grapes, because during the, because of the war, they would have to sell these grapes and all that. So that was, that thought always ran through my mind. Father had worked so hard to finally get a nice crop, and somebody else profited from it.

RP: Oh, so strawberries, strawberries would be coming on, too, at that time.

GU: Yeah. And particularly strawberries, strawberry is, you have to take care of it. It doesn't grow by itself like a vine does. And so I don't think, after evacuation, I don't think any strawberry farm prospered.

LU: That's a backbreaking job, strawberries. You're always on your knees or bent over. And there's always weed, so they had to keep weeding. But now, you know how they raise it, they... before the planting they lay a plastic sheet, they poke hole and then they plant. And so there's hardly any weeds, weeding to do, plus, if it rains, it's not in contact with the ground so the strawberry doesn't rot like they used to. Before, when the ground gets wet, the strawberries rotted. So nowadays, to raise strawberries is a lot easier than before. Although to pick is still backbreaking job.