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SG: I'm trying to think. If you don't mind if I'm asking a little bit more about what your life was like when you're in Hawaii, growing up in Hawaii, if you had memories of what it was like living there when you were younger?

AU: Well, it was nice. I mean Hawaii, it's like I was telling you, there really isn't that much discrimination at all, and I was, I was taught to, you know, be whatever I wanted to be. And of course, my father always had me study Japanese also. And I remember when I was kid that he had bought a blackboard about that size and the chalk and the blackboard, eraser. And every week, I had to fill that blackboard with the Japanese kanji. He made me do that every week, and that's how I learned my kanji. And things were so... well, you know, so nice then. My mother, in Hawaii, there were a lot of Issei men from Japan that were bachelors. They came, you know, like all the immigrants did. A lot of them came to work. They never got married because they were some, my mother used to tell me that they would have what they call a, like the picture bride. They would call, you know, the girls, and she used to laugh and tell me there were some men that was sent somebody else's, handsome men's picture over, and the woman would look at that picture and think well, this is a man I'm going to marry, and she would come. When she got off the boat, and she would see an entirely different man, you know, and not a handsome man, and the bride would run away, and she used to tell me those funny stories.

But it was a little town that I lived in. And there was a church just above, a couple blocks from my house up and a little Christian church, and I remember I, they used to have, on Christmas, they used to have this Santa Claus, and they would say you come over for Christmas because we're going to have Santa Claus, and he's going to bring you presents and candies and stuff, and I wanted to go, but I was kind of afraid of the Santa Claus. You see that man in beard, but I remember that the reverend there was, I forgot what his name was. What was his name? Anyway, and one day we were talking about that, and this gentleman was from Hawaii also, and he, when I said I came from the Big Island, and he said, "Oh, I'm from, I was there too." We talked and I said, well, Reverend Shishido. And I said, "There used to be a minister, a Reverend Shishido," and he says, "That's me." And he's, I think he, if he's already retired, then he used to be a professor at Pacific University in Forest Grove. And I thought, wow, it's a small world. And then, there used to be a Chinese meat market right next, close to the church, and I remember going down, and there's a bakery down the street, three blocks down the street, and they would bake bread at night. And my mother would say, you know, just about the time the bread is done, she says, "You want to go buy bread?" And she'd give me a dime, and I would walk down to the bakery, and it's, bread has just come out of the oven, you know. And I remember thinking, and that's why to this day, I like to eat those hot breads right out of the oven, that's so nice.

Yes, but my mother, going back to the bachelor, the Issei bachelors, because they were bachelors and they used to work with my dad, a lot of them. And Dad used, I guess my father was a very generous person, you know. He would, then when they would get sick or something, he'd say, "You come over to my house," and he would bring them home and expects my mother to take care of them, so they would stay. And so I used to remember, and I guess that kind of instilled that instinct on me, and I'd still have that feeling that well, when you see somebody in need that you want to kind of take care of these people and take care of the older people. But it was nice. People were very good to each other.

SG: What kind of work did your father do?

AU: He worked over there in the, in the Big Island, there was a lot of this sugar, sugar cane plantation, so he was working there. And he, they used to have to build those roads in, you know, in the cane fields, and he used to contract those, I mean, they would hire, he was hired by the plantation, but then he would have his crew and work them to build these roads. And my mother, there was this little courthouse down the street, and every year or so that my mother had to have her license renewed, and the sheriff would come, and he used to come and have his hair cut and everything, and he'd say, "Mama-san, it's about time you got your license renewed." She didn't speak very much English. She said, "Okay. I go tomorrow. You take care of me, okay?" And he said, "Okay, okay." And there was a little, a theater down the street, and every, once a week, they would have a Japanese movie. And in the afternoon, they would come around with this car and they would bang on the taiko. They had this taiko, bang on, and they could just throw this paper, showing what kind of movie they were showing. And my father would say, you know, he said, it usually started about seven, so he says, about six o'clock, he says, "You go there and you reserve the seats for us. You get, reserve two seats for us." And so every Monday, I would go and get the ticket, and I would reserve the seats. I'd bring two extra zabutons, and I'd put it on the seat and reserve it for them so then when they come in later. But that was fun.

[Interruption]

SG: As a child, what other things did you for fun in Hawaii?

AU: We used to do dance, you know. We used to take these Japanese dance lessons. In Hawaii, they also have this Bon dance, so, and here you have it too. But over there, you go around all the different churches and have the dance. So, you know, it comes Bon, it's like every weekend, there is a dance somewhere, and everybody, and during the day, we had to all go and help, and we make all this onigiri, you know, and things like that, so that we then pass it out to all the dancers when they come, when the dancers get hungry. So it was kind of fun because you go to, you know that you're going to eat. But you go to all the different churches. So in the course of Obon for about a month every weekend, you're dancing somewhere. And we used to, well, to get a little kiss, you know. We used to like to go into the sugar cane fields and practice. But then the school used to say, "Now, I understand that there are some kids that are going into the sugar cane." [Laughs] And then when the sugar cane comes down the flume that we used to have some kids climb on that and pick the sugar cane out. So I used to tell my kids, you know, those sugar canes are so good. And so, well, the sugar cane open, that comes over here is quite different. In Hawaii, it looks like it's bigger, it's plumper, and it's juicier, and it's good. So one day, I bought sugar cane over here, I don't know, Safeway or somewhere. I told my kids, "Try this, it's good." Gosh, they didn't like it. They said, "What is this chewy stuff?" But it seems like we used to, somehow, the kids all used to get together because it was small town. It was very nice. When I went back afterwards, it's like everybody, it's so dead now because nobody raises sugar cane anymore. They're all out, and so all the young ones leave town. And I think, you know, either they, well, then, even Honolulu is getting so crowded that they can't find much jobs, so I think a lot of them come to the States.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.