Densho Digital Archive - Susumu Iwasaki Interview (denshovh-isusumu

<Begin Segment 4>

RP: Let's back up a little bit. In... can you introduce us to the rest of your siblings, your brothers and sisters?

SI: Yeah.

RP: Starting with the oldest first. Who was the... you have an older brother?

SI: Yeah.

RP: His name?

SI: Nori. Noriyuki. That was his first name. Then the number two son was Isamu. And I was the third. And then we have a daughter, I mean, a sister, Tae. And, anyhow, I still got a younger brother, Itsu, Itsuo. So there was five of us in our family.

RP: And who were you closest to?

SI: Pardon?

RP: Who were you closest to of your siblings?

SI: I guess my oldest brother, huh. He was one of those kind of guys that's, you know, just took care of everybody. And my second brother was really quiet. And younger brother, it was, like we're about five year, six year difference, see. So...

RP: He was the baby.

SI: Yeah.

RP: How about your sister?

SI: Sister, well... you know, guys on Terminal Island, you know, like they, they weren't too much into girls. There were a few people that was dating girls. But most of 'em just... they didn't care too much about girls. And that's how we were brought up.

RP: What did they care about?

SI: Like, well, mostly just having fun. I mean, doing the things like... because most of us didn't have no car, nobody to drive, and Dad was working every day and Mother was working every day. So the only time, only time that Dad and the family used to get together was on Fourth of July. And my oldest brother, he was working in the cannery and going fishing, so he used to make a little money. So he used to buy all the fireworks and that's the only time that Dad used to go out with us, to shoot fireworks at, at the beach. So that was, thing that we kind of remember looking forward to. And now of course Christmas and New Year's. Christmas, the fisherman... there were a few of these, well, there were a lot of bachelors, you know, fisherman. And some of them used to come to our house and eat with us. And I can remember a guy named Murakami, he was our cook on one of the boat. So he used to come and he used to cook for us. And he used to make turkeys and then New Year's time he helped Mother make all these... it was the only time that we actually enjoyed eating at home. Of course we ate... not well, but we used to eat a lot of that... the fishermen used to bring in fish for us so that's what we used to eat was mostly fish every day. Most of, most of the time anyway.

RP: And rice too?

SI: Oh, yeah. And rice... and for that reason why, we used to have these bachelors come to the house and they'd eat with us. And Dad used to loan 'em money and you know. And then... so, for that reason, New Year's time they'd bring tons of rice for us to eat the rest of the year. I don't know why sugar. They used to bring sugar. I remember they're bringing a whole sack full of sugar and then rice. And so we used to have rice for the rest of the year, which was good, you know. But I remember it was, from what I've heard now, when the war began, a lot of people, they couldn't go out and work because there was no fishing, nobody was working, and I heard a lot of people were having a hard time. And you know, this guy, I don't know why they never ever mention his name or they didn't care or what, I don't know. But a guy named Murakami, he used to own a market. And he used to, he was allowed to go to the market and bring food and they used to pass it around to the people for free. That's what I heard. It was amazing, you know, that he did this. And to this day I can't understand why people don't recognize him. But that's, that's what I heard he was doing.

RP: Tell us a little bit about your father. What type of a person was he as a father and...

SI: He was, he didn't say much. He didn't talk to us too much. But, from what Mother used to tell us, he was really good at heart. He used to loan money to these fisherman and he never records it down. So he never got it back to begin with, I mean, he was that kind of person. And anybody that comes over to the house, he invite them to eat. That was the kind of person he was, my dad was. He didn't say too much, like I said before.

RP: Was he very, very... was he a disciplinarian with you kids or...

SI: Not really. But we knew when he got mad and Mother used to take care of us pretty well. And most of the people on Terminal Island, they were pretty well disciplined because they were brought up the old ways. So, well, there's a couple things that Mom used to tell us is like, "When you go visit somebody, don't ever go empty-handed." And then my dad used to tell me that, he says, "When you say, talk about somebody, don't say anything bad about 'em. If you're gonna say something bad about it, don't say it." So it was... that was the two things that I can still remember that he told us. And Mom told us, I says like, what they call tebura. Tebura means empty-handed. So anyway, that was the two things that I still remember.