Densho Digital Archive - Isao Kameshige Interview (denshovh-kisao

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AC: So when you came back, did you... assume you were very active in the Japanese American community here. Was there a Japanese American league here in Ontario?

IK: We had a softball league, but it was with Caucasians, too. It was a city league, and we had two teams in it. So we played the Caucasians and us, yeah.

AC: What about a, was there a Japanese cultural center or anything like that here?

IK: Not at that time.

AC: An association of any kind?

IK: Well, we had the JACL and we had the Nikkeijinkai they call it, the Japanese association. And the Nikkeijinkai is the one that had that community hall. And then they had our churches, we have the Buddhist church here, and we had the Methodist Christian Church.

AC: And you said you were a member of this church that you still belong to since you came back here, and you helped build the church.

IK: We all did. We were mostly all farmers here. Well, there's a few, there's doctors and dentists and those types of people, but we work in the summertime so it took us two years to build it. But we built it ourselves, and I really thought that was quite an accomplishment. We did a lot of the work in the wintertime, it was cold and snow on the ground and everything, but we still worked inside. I think we did a pretty good job. [Laughs]

AC: So after the war, do you have any thoughts? When this whole redress movement began, how did you feel about that?

IK: Well, it sure as heck didn't pay for what we lost, but it was a little compensation anyway. You have to give JACL credit for that, they went to a lot of trouble just to get that much through. And so I thought it was pretty nice that they did do that, anyway. Whatever we had, we lost what we had down there. So we had to start all over again. May not have had very much, but still, it's something that could have gone back to if we had to. But we didn't have anything left.

AC: You still have some feelings about that or anything?

IK: No, I'm pretty well over it. Better be. [Laughs] Foot in the grave already.

AC: So I guess Bill Hosokawa once named the Nisei the "Quiet Americans." Did this whole thing about redress change any of those attitudes, do you think?

IK: I really don't think so. I don't think... it might have mellowed it, it might have mellowed it, but I wouldn't think it changed very much.

AC: Well, looking back over all that you've experienced your entire life right now, what lessons have you learned about living in America?

IK: The only place to live, that's all I know. Even with the troubles we have. You look at the newspaper, and heck, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

AC: So I guess if your father was still alive today and was here seeing all that you've done, your grandchildren, children, what do you think he'd say?

IK: He'd be happy. I'm sorry he had to go so long. He died way back in 1970, so that's when we'd just begun to get started as far as farming goes. Well, like he was talking about working together, that's what helped me a lot, was we had five families that worked together. And we harvested our potatoes and onions together, put our trucks and tractors together to do this, and that's what helped me tremendously. Because on my own, I don't know. You'd have to require a lot of hand labor, and it would have been difficult. And the way the crop prices were, a single person couldn't buy all the equipment he needed. Like onions and potatoes, when you haul those, you had to have four or five trucks at least. So these other guys that helped me, they were bigger farmers so they had trucks, three or four trucks. But me, I just had one or two trucks, and I couldn't have done all of the things that I did. So I'm thankful for them.

AC: You say your sons have taken over the business now. Are they still in, working in conjunction with these other families?

IK: No, no. We've been out of that for, we've been on our own for quite a few years. Well, ever since they've been back.

AC: How was it distancing yourself from that consortium?

IK: Oh, it wasn't any problem. It was all agreeable. In fact, first we had five families, and then we split it up into two families that, two big farmers were over there, and three of us were over here with the smaller farms, and we got together, three of us. We farmed that way for two years. And then those two other fellows, well, they had brothers, they both had brothers. And so they kept going on their own. You accumulate, start accumulating trucks and equipment. And then the three of us farmed for about two years together, and then... well, we didn't farm together, we farmed on our own, but we harvested together. And then after that we just went on our own.

AC: You said in 1980 you had neck surgery. What was going on for you then?

IK: Well, I had a... my fourth and fifth vertebraes were pinching my nerves. I couldn't even comb my hair, I mean, my arms wouldn't go up, so I had to see the doctor. And they x-rayed it and gave me an MRI, that was about when the MRI first come out. And they looked at it and they said it was a pinched nerve, had calcium deposits on my spine and it was pinching my nerve, that's the reason my arm wouldn't go up. So they cut a piece of bone out of my hip and pushed it in my vertebrae there to separate it, and I've been pretty fair after that. But it's never a hundred percent. They said if you get back ninety percent of the use of your arm, you're fine. And I says, "Yeah, that's about what I got." That's good enough. But my lower back used to give me trouble, and then the Japanese doctor here, Dr. Tanaka, put me on exercises, strengthen your muscles around your back, and that helped. Now I'm all right. But backaches ain't no good.