Densho Digital Archive - Isao Kameshige Interview (denshovh-kisao

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AC: Let's go back and say, how many brothers and sisters did you have?

IK: I had one brother, but he died in 1941, and my sisters, I had four. Three of them are Kibei Niseis.

AC: What is that?

IK: They were born here, but they went back to Japan and studied. And they came back after graduating. But the only one is the oldest one, she married over there and stayed over there, her name is Harada. But she stayed there and she's still alive over there. And my other three sisters, they all died here. One was in Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, she lived there and she was one of the foremen for the Seabrook Farms. They have a plant there that makes frozen foods and things. And then my other sister was farming in Texas.

In fact, talking about Texas, when we quit farming, we had to sell everything, except for equipment, we stored it. And my brother-in-law was in Texas farming, and he wanted the equipment that we had. So we put it on the train car and shipped it over there. And when we got it over there, there was a lot of things missing. The good things were missing, but the larger things like a Caterpillar tractor and the John Deere tractors and things like that got there. But we questioned it, we asked the authorities about it, but they said they didn't know what happened. Anyway, we shipped everything over there. When we were farming there -- this was in May, so most of our crops were up. In fact, like sugar beets, you got to thin it by hand, and we had that done. And we had money in it, invested in it, and we sold it to a farmer, it was one of our neighbors, and I think they gave us twenty-five dollars an acre or something like that. And then we stored our camera and our rifle and things at the courthouse. And when we got here, we had it shipped over here, but we got our .410 shotgun, we didn't get the camera or anything. But whatever we had there they shipped over here, and it wasn't much left.

AC: So what were the names of your brothers and sisters?

IK: My true sister's name is Mary, and she married Speed Harada in Corona, California, and they were farming down there. And she died about three years ago, maybe two years ago, she had a blood clot. Well, what happened was she was out fishing, deep sea fishing, and she fell or something and scratched her leg and it bled, of course. But she had blood clots from that, and they think that's what caused it. But she was still in her seventies when she died. And my other sisters, two of my Kibei sisters, the one in New Jersey, she died about five years ago. And my other sister was married to that farmer in Texas, she died in L.A. a few years ago. And her name was Date, Sueko Date, and the one in New [Jersey] was Ichiyo Nakai. They're all passed away now. But I've got a lot of nephews and nieces in both New Jersey and L.A. right now.

AC: What's the name of the sister who's in Japan?

IK: Toshiko Harada. And it's a funny thing, my sister's name is Mary Hisako, and Toshiko's daughter's name is Hisako, and she married a Harada. [Laughs] So they both had Hisako Harada, both had the same name. It was coincidence. My dad had some property over there in Hiroshima, and when MacArthur took over Japan, he said that if you lived in the United States, you couldn't own any property there. So when my dad passed away, he gave me all the description of the property, but I figured that I couldn't own it. So I told my sister that lived there to take it, do whatever you want with it, because there was nothing I could do about it. And she sold it to my uncle, and she built a new home. [Laughs] She built a real Western-style home, because when I visited her, I got to stay there, and it was a lot more convenient than some of the other places I stayed. The bathrooms were inside and everything, so it was pretty nice. But my other sister over here was kind of upset because she got the legacy of my dad's. But I told them, well, I didn't know what to do. What I should have done was consult them, but I didn't. I just told my sister to do what she thought was necessary.

AC: They were half sisters?

IK: Yes, they were half sisters. I only have one true sister. My dad was married three times. And they were from his first wife, these three sisters, and then the second wife died while she was still in her twenties. And my mom was his third wife, and her name was Ono, and they come from Hiroshima, too. Her folks lived in Sacramento. Well, they moved to Sacramento, but they lived in Stockton.

AC: You said you had another brother who died in 1941?

IK: Uh-huh.

AC: What happened?

IK: Well, see, he committed suicide. He wasn't very... he was ill. That's a long time ago. And then so it was just me and my sister that went into camp.

AC: How old was he at the time?

IK: Seventeen, I think. And he just graduated from school.