<Begin Segment 11>

MR: How did the Depression affect the Japanese community?

HY: Well, in Hood River because farm communities I don't think were hit quite as hard as the businesses where you have to depend on moving dresses and shoes and cars and things like that. In farms, you can raise your own pigs and chickens, and you can eat if not, you can't, maybe don't have any money to buy clothes and shoes and butter, but at least you can eat, so it wasn't that bad. But the problem was people who were still paying mortgages, see, you got to have money to pay the mortgage, and that's why there were so many foreclosures because money ceased to exist, so they couldn't do this. So in the, as far as I know, in the city of, not city, the county of Hood River, population about ninety Japanese families about that time, where one family that asked for government welfare and she would happen to be a widow. And after things got better, she did get welfare. The only one I ever heard of. She eventually paid back the government for what she got during that period of time. I don't know. That may be an apocryphal story, but that's what I heard. That's what my oldest brother told me. He says, "That's the truth. Only one person, a widow, asked for government handout." Japanese generally don't because Japanese, in those days and even maybe now, help each other a lot. They depend on each other. And rather than go into, they know the government's there to help them, but they'd rather not do that, so they prefer to go to friends or to kenjin which is prefectural people, or to a Japanese organization to ask for help before they'll go to a politician or the federal government. So that was the way the Japanese handled that. They'd ask each other. So there's a lot of mutual support there in those days.

MR: The Yasui Brothers Store was selling dresses and shoes, and how did they do during the Depression?

HY: Well, the Yasui Brothers did okay even during the Depression because it kind of had a far flung empire in those days, so you know, although the money didn't come in, there was still always income from... because my father was always doing something. He kind of helped the pioneer the asparagus industry, and so money would come in from that; and then of course, there's the grocery store. The thing is during the Depression, of course, nobody had any money to pay. Well, very few people had money to pay. So what they did is they bartered a lot of things. They'd bring in chickens. Well, for example, I remember one year we had six turkeys for Thanksgiving, and they were live turkeys. I was a little kid, but I thought, my heavens, we got a flock of turkeys, and they got strings around their neck and pound it with a string tied to the stake. And we ate those darn things, but I don't know how long it took us because the people couldn't pay for the sacks of rice, their miso or the noodles, so they'd bring us, because they can raise turkeys, and they could raise pigs. Sometimes they'd bring us things like boxes of smelt. In the Sandy River, they used to have smelt running because, well, they'd do it for two reasons. One was out of goodness of the spirit, and two, because they had too many fish, but they'd bring us boxes of smelt. You know, in those days in the summertime, smelt don't keep very long. We didn't have freezers. And then there's another man who used to find these matsutake, these mushroom, and he'd bring it to the store to barter, and my uncle and things would barter it for something else or exchange. So we survived all right. I don't remember my father, I'm sure it affected my father because in all my life, I never heard him say anything to do, fukieki. Fukieki means hard times, difficult times, and he, he'd squeeze a penny. Oh man, Abe Lincoln always hollered. You'd say, "Dad, give me a quarter. I want to go movies." "Quarter? You know how much a quarter is? In those old days, it would take you almost a whole day to make a quarter. Here, I'll give you ten cents." "You can't go to the movies for ten cents anymore, Dad." "Well, okay, but spend it wisely. Here's a quarter." He'd always remind us the value of money, always, never failed. He never missed.

MR: During the Depression, he had kids in college; is that right?

HY: No, not in the Depression.

MR: Not in the Depression?

HY: No. That was a little bit before. See, my oldest brother was born in 1913, and he died when he was seventeen, so he wasn't in college and so Chop... the Depression was 1929. But towards the tail end of the Depression, yes, he did have some kids in college like my oldest brother Chop and Min. Min started in 1934, so you know, it was still Depression era. It wasn't the Depression, but it was still Depression era, but that's right. But as I say, my father, at that time, my father and uncle, remember, my uncle is half the equation. But he was kind of a silent partner like my father was a silent partner in the store, but they were always one, okay. So he had, as I say, interest in somewhere between 800 and 1000 acres of land, and this is all producing, most of it was producing property, so he had income of sorts. So that's why he was land rich. Probably he owned as much land as anybody in Hood River at that time, at that particular time. So he had some income, so he was able to send my two brothers to college. It was during the war when the income was seized because the leasing or the selling of the land that he had to sell the land, and that's why land poor now, well, not land poor, but not land rich anymore. But of course, he's long since gone, and he didn't have anything or had very little to do except give his yes or no approval to selling the land because he was in prison. So yes, we had money.

MR: During the Depression and maybe earlier, how did people get around in Hood River?

HY: You mean --

MR: Transportation. What --

HY: Oh, well, of course, I don't remember personally, but we had cars, of course. I don't remember the horse and buggy days. And they had buses, but mainly, I think they went by train to Portland and Hood River, between Portland and Hood River; although, they had buses later on. In Hood River, they had also the Mount Hood Railroad. That's a very interesting story. The Mount Hood Railroad was from the town of Hood River built to spur line to the town of Dee, actually a hamlet of Dee, which was located the Oregon Lumber Mill. It was a sawmill then. The people who built that railroad in 1908 was Kanichi Itano and his crew of forty Japanese laborers. They built that railroad spur line some ten miles from the Hood River main line which is the Union Pacific Line to Dee. And then four years later, they extended that to Parkdale. That line still exists, and it's the Japanese that built that. Of course, they didn't engineer it. They're the ones that provided the muscle. So that was one way they got from Dee to Parkdale to Odell. This is on this spur line to Hood River. But in addition to that, there was a Mount Hood, what they called a Mount Hood Traction Company. And what it was was they had what they called a jitney, but it was a kind of a truck body mounted on wheels, railroad wheels, but it was driven by a gasoline engine, so they called it a jitney. It was kind of formed as a bus system. But of course, it had to go on the rail, so it only went to Pine Grove, Odell, Dee, and Parkdale and back, so that was another way. And then Hood River had one taxi, but you know, I think that was after the Depression, I don't think it was during the Depression. So we did a lot of walking too in those days too. But our family always had a car as far as I can remember, and most of the people, farmers did too. I don't know of any that didn't have a car. That's the way we moved.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.