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RP: What are some of your early memories about growing up on the farm and life on the farm?

OM: Well, aside from the hard work, because you know as kids we were responsible for cleaning the chicken coops and feeding, helping feed, you know. My mother would do all the mental work, right, saying put this in there, put that in there and she'd mix it up. But we'd have to go out and distribute it, change the water, pick the eggs up, you know, cleaning particularly the chicken coops was a chore you didn't, it wasn't very good. [Laughs] And then help my dad on the farm, weeding and that kind of stuff, irrigating. That's the things that we used to do all the time but it was still a relatively carefree life. I mean you know, if we didn't have any chores, me and my brothers would go out and raise all kinds of hell.

RP: Doing what?

OM: Doing, well, getting into all kinds of trouble or going to the neighbor's place and play with their kids. The flower farm was one that was really nice. We used to have pretty good times there. But you know, it wasn't that we had money or that kind of stuff. We didn't have a... I didn't have a bike or, none of us had a bike. We just ran around doing what we wanted to do, you know. Even playing with the kids... cats, we used to have cats all over the place because it was a chicken farm and there was lots of rats around I guess. The cats would somehow accumulate, you know, and we used to go up on the roof and attach a parachute to 'em and throw 'em off. [Laughs] That was our form of entertainment. We didn't have toys but we had a lot of fun.

RP: Who needs toys when you got cats with parachutes?

OM: Where?

RP: Who needs toys when you got cats with parachutes?

OM: Oh yeah, that's right, that's right, who needs toys?

RP: So were your parents like Helen's, were they pretty strict?

OM: No, I wouldn't say... my mother was probably more stricter than my dad. My dad was kind of strict in the sense that he wanted you to study but I wasn't the best student myself. I thought my oldest brother was probably pretty smart, the one above me was very smart, my younger brother was very very smart. My sister and I we're not too, too good of students, you know, being a student but we got by. I was able to struggle my way through school and even went to college so that's, you know. But my dad was, I think, wanted us to study a lot. My mother was the disciplinarian, right.

RP: So you say you got... you got into some trouble occasionally?

OM: Well, I wouldn't say occasion... trouble in the sense with the law or things like that. For example, where we used to live it was a very sandy place and we used to dig caves in the sand. And one time I remember my brothers were digging this cave and this whole damn cliff came down on us, you know, that kind of trouble, you know. We didn't say anything about it because we got out of it okay. But we used to have caves all over the place, I mean digging. I mean it was one on another place where I had a big cave where we used to hide out, you know, it's maybe four foot by five foot, cube like, you know, into a cliff. Now that's okay as long as that's stable but if it starts to go... but you know, it was very, even in these sandy places, these brushes, trees would actually grow. And from the cliff, we'd dive into the thing, right, and in facts that's where I broke my toe just before we went to camp. In fact I probably stayed with that broken toe for two, three months in camp, you know, before I got it looked at. But just roughnecking it, more or less, not trouble, you know, against the law or things like that, just bad boys. [Laughs]

RP: Exploring your turf?

OM: Well, just being kids.

RP: You mentioned there was three or four other Japanese families around the area. Were you kind of isolated as this group of --

OM: Yeah, it was probably the closest neighbor there was probably half a mile away. And the others up on the hill were at least a good mile away. It took an effort to go there, you know, you have to have a pretty good reason, good reason to go. You know, like the flower growing family, I would finally... after we left for camp, I didn't see them 'til three or four years later in Tule Lake, you know. We didn't go to the same camps obviously, I don't know where they went but they weren't in Jerome, but I saw them in Tule Lake. The other families were much older, the boys were much older.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.