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AC: What were the names of your siblings?

SS: Oh, my oldest sister's name was Teruyo. Our names were really hard to say. And my second sister's name was Akiko. My third sister's name was Teruko, and my brother's name is Shingo, my name is Sumiko, and my next sister's name, Mutsuye, and then Masanobu and Tomiko. And we all had nicknames. The last two, I don't know if it was our neighbors or people who worked for us named the last two kids, so Masanobu is Jim Wada, and Tomiko is Dorothy Wada.

AC: What are the nicknames of all your siblings?

SS: Well, I think my oldest sister they used to call Toots. [Laughs] And then my second sister, we call her Eiki, it's Akiko, and then Teruko, our family called her Ted all the time, but people in town call her Teddy, it sounds more feminine. And then Shingo, he never liked his name, he said, but we called him Shing. And then they always call me Sum, but at school I got called everything: Semako, Semiko, Semicolon, whatever. [Laughs] And my younger sister's name is Mutsuye, and we always called her Muts, and her friends would call her Mutts or Mutt. And then I don't know, we just called Jim Jim or Jimbo, and then our youngest sister's nickname to the family was Toki, and she hates it. She doesn't like it now, and she wants us to call her Dorothy or Dot. So we try to, but it's real hard. We're so used to calling her Toki.

But, let's see... my dad was farming in White Swan with Mr. Matsui, we called him Uncle, but he was actually Dad's first cousin. And anyway, Mom tells some stories about how they never knew any English, she and Mrs. Matsui, and they'd go down to buy something, they'd have to do charades, you know, and she said they went to buy eggs one time and she said, oh, they were making all these motions like hen laying eggs and they say, "Kokikoko," and nobody knew what they were saying. I think Japanese chickens talk different. [Laughs] Because don't they say cock-a-doodle-doo here or cluck, cluck? Anyway, kokikoko is how they say chicken, what chickens say. Anyway, they had a lot of those stories like that to tell us.

Mom said she was so lonesome, when they, the first year she was here, Mrs. Matsui wasn't there yet and they didn't have any friends or support, Japanese people, and so my mom was so lonesome that, she was pregnant... my oldest sister is about 4'10" and real teeny weeny, and Mom says, "I think she's small like that because I cried every day I was pregnant because I wanted to go back Japan." She says, "That's why Teruyo is so small." And then she said, and also they didn't know any better, and when she didn't have milk, she fed her canned milk straight from the can without diluting, and she said they were just so ignorant about some things. So she said, "Poor Teruyo." But then they had Akiko, and Akiko was much taller than my oldest sister, and then they had... they had a stillborn girl after Akiko, and then they had Teruko, who we called Ted. So they had four girls, they were just waiting for a boy. And finally on the fifth try they got a boy named Shingo. And in those economic times, they needed boys to help on the farm, so my dad felt deprived, you know, 'cause he had so many girls. And poor Shingo had to work really hard. And then I was next, and then Muts was next.

And then, oh, we were in Washington when the first six children were born. I don't know, Dad heard about some government land thing where if you cleared the land and everything, you would get that acreage. And so he and a couple of his friends, they were doing pretty well in that Yakima Valley raising potatoes and things, but I guess they were young yet and they wanted to venture out and they went to Vale, in the Vale hills there and cleared the sagebrush and claimed this land. I guess it's kind of like a homestead thing. And so I don't know how many acres my dad got, Mr. Nitta and Mr. Hirai, they were his friends, each got a plot. So they had a little settlement, I don't know what our neighbors called it. Three Japanese people settled in this little place. So it was really tough times there. My mom said it was probably the hardest times in their lives because it was Depression times and they just had a hard time making a living off that land. It was on the west bench of Vale. But my mom and dad were very religious, and they thought they'd make it.

When they were in Washington they helped start a church over there, a Methodist church. So when they were over here in Oregon, they got interested in starting a church here, too. So I don't know, I had that blessings book, our fiftieth anniversary book, that maybe you could read about the history of our church here.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.