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SS: Then in 1936, my mother died. She had cancer, and we were left in the care of my father. I remember at that time some friends of his came down from Seattle and suggested to him that he probably could not raise us, so maybe we needed to be adopted out by some other families, and which he adamantly refused and said that he had promised my mother that we would always stay together. And so my father really was a remarkable person, and he was able to parent, be both parents for us as we were growing up, and we lived on this little farm near Granger until we were forced out by the evacuation. My childhood was, I think, a very happy one. I knew very few Japanese people. I think we had two or three family friends that we would get together on holidays or special occasions, but we did not live in a Japanese community. I grew up with all Caucasian friends all through high school, attended a Presbyterian church in Granger. Let me see... what else I can remember? It was a typical rural setting. We helped my father and his truck gardening during the summer. I can't remember anything very exciting or, just kind of routine, rural farm living.

DF: With your friend Elsie who lived, who was Native American, can you think of any, you know, cross-cultural exchange with traditions that you did with her family and some that she did with your family?

SS: Well, we really didn't interact that much as families. When salmon fishing season came around, of course, they all took off and went salmon fishing, probably, I imagine on the Columbia River, and they would always bring us salmon, and sometimes they would smoke it and give it to us, and we did things like that but never interacted too much socially.

DF: And what was mealtime with your family like, you know, your dad being such a good cook? What did he enjoy cooking?

SS: Well, one of the things I remember about my dad was that, of course in the summer, you didn't have time for, or spring and summer, he didn't have time for much cooking. But in the wintertime when we came home from school, he would always have either like warm donuts or cupcakes for us, and we much enjoyed. Our meals were usually mixed. Sometimes we had, or a lot of times we had Japanese food of course, and other times he would fix American meals because he had learned to cook American foods. I remember one of the big treats was when he would make homemade noodles for us, and we'd have like noodles and soup and that kind of thing. But he would make osushi, and we'd have the regular New Year's feast, and there were about three families that we would get together and go visit each other over New Year's and the days following. We were poor, but we always had plenty to eat because we lived on a farm. My father would raise, fatten two hogs every year, and our neighbors would come and help him butcher, and then we would have the bacon and the hams smoked, and we would share that with the neighbors, and they would butcher a couple of cows, and so we always had plenty of pork and beef. And then of course we raised chickens and had eggs, so we always had plenty to eat.

DF: Do you remember any dinner conversations that you had as a family over mealtimes?

SS: Well, I don't remember other than just, you know, ordinary kinds of things. My mother, when she was alive, always stressed education, and she had always said that when we were, graduated from high school, that she expected that we would all go to college, which we did. All four of us have college degrees. And other than that, it was just ordinary conversation, I think.

DF: But every night you would eat dinner together?

SS: Oh, yes. We always ate all our meals together.

DF: How was your life different growing up without a mom after the age fourteen?

SS: Well, it certainly put a lot of responsibility on me because I was the oldest; but somehow we managed, and my father did very well, you know. He was not a strict disciplinarian, but we, I think, managed fairly well, didn't get into any trouble.

DF: And what kinds of work did you do on the farm? What was your job?

SS: Well, the first job in the spring was cutting asparagus because he raised asparagus, and we would do that before we went to school. We'd get up like four-thirty in the morning and cut the asparagus and put it in the crates and then go on to school. Other than that, it was weeding; and then in the summer, we'd, like, pick beans or pick tomatoes, a lot of weeding, that kind of thing. In truck gardening, there's a lot of just little things to do, harvesting and planting, weeding, that kind of thing.

DF: So what was your relationship like with your siblings?

SS: Well, we're very close. I have a sister now who lives out in Newberg, and my brother lives up in Everett, Washington, and my other sister, who is now deceased, lived in Port Angeles. We've always been very close and very supportive of each other.

DF: So growing up on a farm, you spent a lot of time working together.

SS: Right, uh-huh. We all worked together and played together.

DF: Were you closer to any of your siblings than others?

SS: Not really. There's six years' difference between me and my next sister, so we're probably closer now as grown-ups than we were when we were growing up.

DF: Earlier, you mentioned that your mom had passed away from cancer. What do you remember about her illness?

SS: Well, that was a very traumatic time for us. Of course, we lived on a farm. My father took her to Yakima which was the largest, I don't know whether you'd even call it a city, but the largest medical center; and from there, he was advised to take her up to a cancer center up in Seattle. So my siblings and I stayed with some friends at home so we could continue going to school, and my dad and my mother were up in Seattle for a couple of months. And then it was determined that there wasn't anything more they could do for her, so he brought her home, and she died at home.

DF: What kind of cancer?

SS: Pardon?

DF: What kind of cancer?

SS: She had a form of stomach cancer. Let's see, my youngest brother was only about four when she died, so it was pretty traumatic for us and for my father.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.