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MR: This is an interview with Yoneko Hara, a Nisei woman, eighty years old, at her home in Portland, Oregon, on July 18, 2003. The interviewer is Margaret Barton Ross of the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center's Oral History Project 2003. Thank you for having us in your home for this interview. Let's start out talking about the circumstances of your birth, and where you were born.

YH: Well, I can remember we lived in a little tiny red house, and it had one bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen. And we all slept in the one bedroom, we lined up in there, and I can still remember reading the comics on Sunday morning there. And then that's the only recollection. Then we went to the new house. We had too many kids, illnesses, and we were told to move, build a house or move, we needed more room.

MR: You say you were told to move?

YH: By the doctor, a family friend. We kept getting colds and sick, and so he said, "You should move to a bigger place with more bedrooms."

MR: And when did you move?

YH: About 1928, thereabouts.

MR: Let's go back to when you were born and where.

YH: I was born in Portland, I don't know where. I think it was a midwife. I believe they went to the midwife's place when my mother was ready to deliver me, and that's all I know.

MR: And your birthday?

YH: September 12, 1922.

MR: Thank you. So you were just saying that you moved to this new house. Where was that?

YH: The new house is right next door on the property that my folks had, and he built a house that had five bedrooms. It was huge, it was the biggest house in the neighborhood, and there are six children, so we had room for the boys, the girls, and the spare for a guest and a little room we could play in downstairs, and then the folks had the master room. And it was just wonderful. We would run around the house, and we'd go upstairs, downstairs, and at that time, it was before the Depression, so things were going quite well. And then the Depression came, but we still had the house, and it made a little difference.

MR: What did your parents do?

YH: My father grew flowers, he was a greenhouse man. My mother would go out there and work with him, and then he was mostly a wholesale grower, and then he had a little retail place on the property there with the greenhouses.

MR: Now you say Portland, but where in Portland was this greenhouse?

YH: Southeast Portland on, oh, it's between Powell and Foster Road on Sixty-third, Southeast Sixty-third. And he had about nine greenhouses in a row, and it's all residential area there. And this is right, I'm sure the houses were as old as the greenhouses were at that time, because he bought it from somebody else.

MR: Was that an area where other people had greenhouses, too?

YH: No, no, they were all residents, all single dwellings, no apartments.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.