<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Where did you go to grammar school, Ted? The first grammar school?

TH: The first grammar school was in where I was born, and I remember the first day I went, I guess they did the preliminary sign up, but the first day of school I went to neighboring friend, he might have been about six years older than I was. I went to kindergarten and my hair was cut Japanese style, in a butch haircut, and so it was like a brush. I remember everybody, all the other kids coming and rubbing their hands on my head.

RP: Did they make a wish, too?

TH: I guess, I don't know [Laughs]

RP: What was the name of the grammar school?

TH: I think it's Willard.

RP: Willard?

TH: Uh-huh, It's still in existence, I drive by it to go to Whittier Narrows to play golf every Tuesday.

RP: So when you go out there to play golf on that golf course, do you think about the old farm out there?

TH: Uh-huh, but we don't play their mountain course, we don't play that, that's sort of an executive shorter course. But when we do play it, it brings back memories.

RP: And did you like to play with as a kid growing up? Who were your buddies, close friends?

TH: There were of course the closest friend I have now is, he's still living, that's my dad's real good friend, they came from Fukuoka together. As kids we used to stay over, about maybe two, three days, sleepover and stuff. When we went to these picnics, we hung around together. And the other good friend I had was the friend that lived in Los Angeles and he came over every Sunday for Sunday dinner.

RP: When you needed to go shop, where would you go shop when you lived on the farm here? Where was the nearest area, community?

TH: Do you know, that's a good question. There were no grocery stores outside of somewhere you could go buy bread and milk. But there used to be a unique system where they used to be two different Japanese specialize, I wouldn't call them peddlers but they were like people that came around and took orders. The delivery date might be the next day or the day after. And whatever you ordered, they'd take the order out in the field. They would drive out to the field and they would take your order and it was on a credit basis, or crop time. There were two in the area when I grew up. Also there was a fish man, peddler, that came around once a week and it could be Saturday or could be a Wednesday, and he would carry a tofu in a five gallon bucket. He had to go into the house and either refrigerate it or leave it somewhere in the shade. The fish also, well, usually when the fish man came my mother used to run home and sometime he would come out in the field if we were busy but she would go home. If we didn't have ice in our ice box, she would salt the fish down and wrap it up in newspaper and stick it in the iceless ice box. And that's the way they used to preserve fish and stuff that they ordered.

RP: So that's how you got some of your other food supplies?

TH: Uh-huh. Peddlers, they made a pretty good living, too.

RP: Where did your father market his produce? Did he have someone come to the farm and haul it for him or did he personally have to deliver it to a vegetable market or produce mart?

TH: When I grew up, it's an old beat up, to me it looked beat up, but it was a fairly good truck, it was like a GMC and it was a hard rubber tired truck. And the early remembrance of that truck was that he used to haul cantaloupe and he used to drive it into the produce market at Seventh Street, seventh and Central in Los Angeles. He, like all farmers, now they take their wares and they go early enough that they get all set up and get ready to sell. Sometime he would have a hot item that people wanted so it wasn't too long before they used to help him unload it and put it away. Whether he collected all his money for all his merchandise, I don't know. But he worked hard all day packing all the crates and then he had a money bag. If you're sort of clumsy, you gotta keep putting your money in the right place. Whether he lost, or dropped some on the ground, I don't know. But he was a merchant and also had one of those aprons where they had pockets. He had money all over. When someone's walking off he had to go collect it, and he didn't have time to open up the money bag and stick it in there.

RP: Did he, like many Isseis who were in business in America, did he send money back to family in Japan?

TH: He did. When he had a surplus of money and stuff, he didn't forget his relatives in Japan.

RP: Another thing you mentioned is that it was kind of a tradition every year, was to go into Los Angeles and get a family portrait?

TH: Uh-huh. Maybe, I think every once in three or five years we used to take the trip to get a family portrait taken. I think we still have some, or some of the family still has some. It might be in that big trunk, like suitcase, it might still be there.

RP: And who took those pictures?

TH: Toyo Miyatake's studio was in First Street and I believe on the photos there's an imprint of their name on there.

RP: And those photos would also be sent back to Japan?

TH: Yeah, they were. They were, and so when we went back, certain relatives would brought all those photos out. It was on my mother's side where they kept all the photos and when I did visited them in 1979, I saw all the... there might have been five or more. That was in a short period, from say the '20s to '41. So they must have been every three years or so.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.