<Begin Segment 2>

MH: Did you speak English or did you speak Japanese in the home or both?

EF: We spoke both. We weren't that good at the Japanese, but we'd fill it in once in a while. My mother, we spoke to her nothing but Japanese, but my father could understand English. But we tried to speak Japanese, but among the family members, we all spoke English.

MH: What was the role of the boys in your family and the girls in your family?

EF: Well, the girls kind of worked around the house and helped Mother, but they had to get out to work too because that's the way it was.

MH: What do you mean they had to get out to work too?

EF: They had to help with the fieldwork also, and they were a big help. They were a big help. So since we were, all the boys were... well, farm work was never ending, always, especially when you had diversified farming as we did where you had cows and horses and chickens and those items, pigs for instance, very diversified.

MH: What kind of farm crops did you raise?

EF: Well, in, early in the spring, we used to have spinach was our first item. Then we had a patch of asparagus that was always there to harvest. And then we got into the berries, and then later down on the line the cabbage, cauliflower, and those items, broccoli. Brussels sprouts were the items we...

MH: Who helped you harvest besides the family?

EF: We had people that came to work on the farm like Filipinos for instance, and we had a few Japanese people that came to work on the farm because they had no other employment, and they were available for that work.

MH: Were they from the city?

EF: Yes. They were from here, right. And they were a very essential part of the farming because we needed them for the harvest.

MH: Do they live with you or...

EF: Most of them lived with us, lived on the farm, not with us, but there were, you know, we had a combination form. So we had housing for them, so they were able to cook and do things on their own.

MH: How about bathing?

EF: If you were, if you were Japanese, we had a bathhouse where they all went to, they all bathed in the bathhouse. Especially Japanese people, we facilitated all of them. We had a lot of Issei people working on the farm, so my folks made sure that they had those accommodations, and it seemed like it worked well. One bathhouse, but hey, they timed themselves well, and everybody had their bath every day, every night I should say.

MH: Who tended the bathhouse?

EF: My mother, my mother.

MH: Was it gas, was it wood?

EF: No, no. It was all wood. It was all wood, wood fire.

MH: And who built this bathhouse?

EF: Right. We built this bathhouse. My father built the bathhouse.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.