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MR: So at, with all this work that you were doing, you still found time to go to school and work hard there?

MB: Uh-huh, Mama made sure that we had three meals a day. A lot of times, it was just rice or just noodles or fried potatoes, you know, because she was getting fried... well, let's see. Fried potatoes were in the early years when she was working on farms. But now that we raised our own, we didn't have fried potatoes. But we ate a lot of wild greens, and I remember my favorite was dandelion, and Mama would get hog jowls. She couldn't afford bacon because it cost fifteen cents a pound. Hog jowls she could get for ten cents a pound, and she'd buy a half a pound, and that would last us for about a week because she used it for seasoning only, you know, the oil that came out of it in the seasoning. In that way, she cooked dandelions, wild mustard, and snake fern. Snake fern, we didn't much like because it was bitter. Mama would have to peel it, those, the brown ferns, the brown stalks and soak them in water, oh, a day, overnight. And then next day, she could cook it, but it was still kind of bitter, but we had to eat it, so we ate it. Then there was burdock. Since we lived by the river, there was a lot of burdock, and so we had burdock to eat. And those early years in the wintertime when there wasn't any greens that we could get, we had salted salmon. Papa's best friend went up to Alaska, went up to Alaska to work in the salmon cannery. He had a wife and daughter. The wife, his wife had died in childbirth, and the daughter had died soon after, and so then he took off to live up in Canada, or Alaska. I keep saying Canada, but it is Alaska. And that first year he visited, he came back, he brought a 25-pound box of salt salmon for us to eat. And so that first winter and for several winters after that when we didn't have anything else to eat, we had salt salmon to eat with the rice. And I can still remember how good, we had hot tea, rice, and salt salmon to eat, and that 25-pound box lasted about six months because, you know, you don't eat very much salt salmon. The salt salmon was free to the workers. What happened was they box the salmon up in 25-pound boxes to ship, ship out, but sometimes, the box would get broken or maybe some box wouldn't weigh 25 pounds, and so those boxes were set aside to one, you know, to one side, and they were free to the workers, and so that's why our friend, Mr. Otsuta, was his name, used to, he brought the first box. And then after that, he sent them through the mail. And back then, 25-pound box only cost five dollars in postage.

MR: Where did you go to school?

MB: We went to Woodlawn School. The first grade when I started school, the school was at Bryant and Union Avenue, and the distance was about mile and a half. And for our lunches, Mama used to give me five cents, and the five cents could buy a hot dog, and so I'd buy a hot dog. Those first days, I split the hot dog in two, gave Orga half, and I ate the other half, and it went all right for two or three days. And then after that, Orga, I guess Orga got to thinking, that was only half a wiener, a hot dog she got, where is the other half, and so she searched everywhere. She'd search in my pockets and look around all over, and I thought well this won't do. She wants the other half. So after that, after I got the hot dog, I'd take a bite and hand her the rest. Usually all I got was the bun, but at least, you know, she was satisfied with just that one, with that hot dog. Okay. When the rainy season started, we had to stay indoors because we didn't want to get wet, and so we stayed in the lunch room and ate our hot dogs, I mean, Orga ate her hot dog, and I just drank water at the water fountain. The other patrons that were there didn't like seeing us standing there, so they'd make room at the table for us and tell us to sit here at the table. Well, for two or three days, I did sit at the table, but I'd get thirsty, my stomach was hungry, so I'd get up and drink water, and I was jumping in and out. I thought, well, this won't do. I'll just let Orga sit and I'll stand behind her, and so that's the way it went. And after we'd been doing that for about two weeks, the lady that was working at, behind the counter, one of the ladies -- there were three of them working behind the counter -- held up three crackers. She looked at me and then put the cracker on the counter, and I didn't know what she was doing, and so I didn't do anything. And two, three days later, she held up the crackers again, pointed at me, and then put the cracker down. Oh, she was giving me the crackers. So after that, I had crackers to eat. And still later, she held up five crackers when she, and put on the counter. And when I went to get those five crackers, she pushed the condiment tray toward me, and on the tray was ketchup, relish, and mustard. Well, I tried all three of them. The relish I didn't care for, the ketchup I didn't care for, but the mustard tasted real good on the crackers. So I put mustard on four of the crackers, and the fifth cracker I gave to Orga to eat. You know, that extra cracker made her so happy, and that's the way it went all the rest of that year. The next year, since the old Woodlawn School was getting dilapidated, getting run down, they built a new school which was only a mile from our place, and the cafeteria didn't sell hot dogs, so we never got any hot dogs. But I'd like to think that lady that used to give me crackers was my angel. She knew that I was looking after Orga and seeing that she got fed, and so, and she didn't like seeing me starve, so she was giving me crackers to eat, and I never did get to thank that lady. At the new Woodlawn School, I couldn't, the hot dogs were ten cents each, hamburger was ten cents each, and we, and Mama only gave me five cents, so I couldn't buy anything. So after that, Mama gave me, gave each of us a ball of rice to take for our lunch. Well, the other children wanted to eat the rice, so they'd want to swap their sandwiches for our balls of rice, and so we did that. But the other kids wanting rice too would swap their sandwiches with the kid that got the, our ball of rice. So I got the bright idea that if Mama gave us two or three balls of rice, we'd have two or three sandwiches, so I asked Mama to give, make us smaller balls of rice, and she made two balls of rice each for us. In that way, we got two sandwiches apiece. Orga and I would eat three of the sandwiches, and we'd take the fourth sandwich home and gave it to my brother, and he'd say, "Oh, boy," and he'd enjoy his sandwich.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.