<Begin Segment 6>

AC: So, again, because you couldn't go through the normal banking system you had to go, you had these tanomoshis which people would borrow money from to finance whatever business ventures or things that they wanted.

JS: Yeah.

AC: You also mentioned that people buried money. Is that how they saved money? They actually buried money in their, in the ground?

JS: Well, I can't prove that, any part of that statement, because that was a story that's been brought down in American society from the day I can remember anything, that people buried, put it in cans and buried it out in their, and then sometimes they'd forget where they buried it or somebody'd die and they hadn't told anybody where they left it. I think this is part of, this is a fact of American life, though. I think people had money stuffed under their sheets or in their beds, and the house'd burn down and they'd lose all that money. These sound like a bunch of stories, but I think in essence there's quite a bit of truth to it. It kept, you didn't have, most people didn't have a bank account if you were out in the country, so if you need some money and you've, if you really were frugal and you wanted to live within your means -- you've seen comedies of this, I suppose, in the movies and things, and heard stories about people bringing it out of a coffee can in the cupboard, right? That was fact. That was fact.

AC: Is that how your parents, where your parents kept their money?

JS: I think, well, my dad, he even started a bank account for me. I had money in the bank in Carver. I don't know how much, but my dad was putting it in for me. And the bank went broke and I don't, he recovered some, but I don't know how much. But that was when Roosevelt shut the banks down, during the '30s. And those were tough times, because if you didn't have any money stowed away somewhere then you didn't have any, you couldn't eat, because people were scared to sell you anything on credit. I don't remember that, a lot of the tough situations that occurred then, but see, that was about the time I dropped out of school. That was part of the reason probably, because gee, you can't hire a man when you don't know whether you're gonna be able to pay him or not. A lot of things happened like that. Even happened today in some ways. But when you're operating on two dollars a day, a family could live comfortably. In those days, if you lived out in the country. And so people moved back and forth between the town and the country. They'd, people who lived in town would move out in the country where they had a little piece of ground they could raise some vegetables on, and then when they started doing well they'd move back to town. But when you can raise your own vegetables and some fruit and berries and milk a cow, slop some hogs and have some chickens, you can live pretty economically. And that was the way it was then. You didn't have to worry about your toilet pluggin' up because you, all you had to do was have a Sears-Roebuck catalog and you were alright. Where were we? You lost me. [Laughs] I got to start over now someplace.

AC: No, no, it's fine.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.