<Begin Segment 5>

AC: So as a child, what did you do for fun?

SS: Well, we didn't have much, so we played games like... I remember we used to mash cans down and put 'em on our shoes and walk around with these things on our shoes, I forgot what we were doing. But we'd play with stilts, we'd make stilts and play. Annie Over, I remember playing that.

AC: What is that about?

SS: You threw a ball over the roof. Let's see... if you got it over, you said, "Annie Annie Over," but what happened? I can't remember the consequence now. [Laughs] But we used to have games that we played, and we read a lot because we had no TV and the radio wasn't in our rooms or anything. I remember when I was a freshman, you couldn't read Gone With the Wind. They wouldn't let you read Gone With the Wind if you were a freshman. So my older sister had it, and so I read it. I remember reading it. But it was too racy, I guess, to read in those days.

AC: What were some of the other, your favorite books that you remember reading?

SS: I really can't remember. We used to have to read a lot of books in English literature. We used to get books from the library and read a lot. I can't remember any names of books.

AC: What kind of crops did you raise on your farm?

SS: Oh, the folks had onions and potatoes and sugar beets. And I remember having peas one year, and I think Dad raised some carrots and parsnips for seed. They raised seed and hay, wheat, things like that.

AC: Would you mind describing your dad?

SS: Oh, he was a self educated person, a very strong, strict person. We were scared of our dad. [Laughs] He really, I would say he loved his family, but he thought he had to keep us in line, you know. Those Isseis had to be tough to make it in this country. And I think a lot of the Issei men, you know, they had to learn the English and they had to do everything, and the women just stayed home and took care of the kids. A lot of them worked out in the fields, but my mother never really learned English, just enough to speak to the kids. But when she went back to Japan after she lived here thirty-four years, her brothers didn't understand her because she got too many English words mixed in. Like she'd say miruku for "milk," and they didn't even call it milk in those days. But now, I think in Japan they have a lot of words that are English derivatives, like helicopter and things like that. But anyway, Mom didn't think she knew English, but she had changed her language by the time she'd been here thirty-four years. She didn't get to go back to Japan for thirty-four years because we never could raise the money to send her. Yeah, it was kind of sad.

AC: So did she go back to live permanently or just to visit?

SS: Just to visit, yeah. She and my dad went after they were married thirty-four years. It was the first time they went back, just for a visit. And then they barely could make it, you know, and Dad said their relatives were just waiting for a gold watch or something for them to bring to them. They thought America was the land of milk and honey, you know, and some people had lots of money and would bring wonderful gifts, but they barely had enough for passage, or for their plane fares. I guess that the first time they went, they did take gifts, but maybe I was thinking about the first time when Dad went back after my mom, when they got married, he said that one of his relatives asked him for a, where was his gold watch. They thought he was rich now that he lived in America. But yeah, I got kind of mixed up. That was when Dad first went after my mom, when he was thirty years old and had been in this country since he was seventeen and he barely had enough money for passage to go get Mom. But later, when they did go back, after they had been here for thirty-four years, it was still hard for them to go.

AC: What year was that?

SS: 1949. And I remember my mom said, "My gosh, they are so gyogi warui over in Japan now. She says, "They're trying to act like what they see on the movies," and she says, "People are going down the streets hugging each other." [Laughs] She said, "It's just terrible." You know, in '49, it was, even over here it was kind of, people were more reserved.

AC: So how would you describe your mom?

SS: Oh, she was this real strong lady, perfectionist. She and my dad believed in education and they were just, that was the main thing, we had to get good grades and work hard, all that kind of stuff. But she was very... did you see the picture of her here? My mother was very... people called her handsome, I didn't think that was a very good word for a woman, but she was very attractive and very well-dressed. And my second sister was good in, she was in dress design. She lived in New York and she would send my mother all her clothes that she had made by hand, so my mom was very well-dressed, and she always looked nice. She spent her last two and a half years in a nursing home, but she picked her clothes out, it had to be color coded, color matched, her hair was always nice. And just an hour before she died, she was combing her hair. Anyway, but she was a real good woman, real religious, my mom and dad were both religious.

AC: So growing up, you said there were just two Japanese families, so there wasn't really much of a Japanese community, just these two families there in town?

SS: Uh-huh. Well, three, actually, Mr. Hirai was a bachelor for a long time, he married a widow from Seattle who had a son. I guess he was eleven years old when they married. So it was Mr. Hirai and the Nitta family and then our family, just the three families, and we shared a pump, pumped water to each home. And then their land is kind of spiraled off of that center where we lived. But Mr. Hirai had a smaller house than ours, and a garage and shed. Nittas had another home. But we had the biggest family, I guess, so we had the biggest house.

AC: Did your parents say very much about their life in Japan?

SS: You know, my mom, we used to go out and weed onions, and my mom would tell us all about Japan up and down the rows, and we would let it go in one ear and out the other. So it's real sad, we don't really know a lot about our relatives in Japan. My brother, my older sister remembers a lot that Mom told us, but younger ones, we didn't pay attention, but Shingo, my brother, was in the service, was in the occupational forces, and he visited our relatives over there. And so he got to know quite a few of our relatives. He knows who the pictures are of, you know, our old pictures. So, yeah, it's kind of sad, like Paul doesn't really know his family history either, and we don't really know our family history. It's kind of sad.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.