<Begin Segment 2>

TR: And what do you remember about your mother?

AN: Oh, my mother was a real help mate to my father, and she was able to speak some English, not as much. She wasn't as fluent as my father was. But I remember when we moved to Nampa from Sisum Community, to Sisum Community in Nampa, that she would go to my school doings, and she was acquainted with some of the women in the community. And she would have them over, and so she was able to speak English quite well.

TR: Were they married when they came over or did they meet here?

AN: Neither one. They went to, my father went to Emmett, was forty degrees below zero in Missoula, so he decided it was time to move on. So he went to Emmett, and there Henry Fuji and Mr. Takeuchi and my father, H.K. Hashitani, they set up housekeeping in a little shack. And they, let's see, they rented eighty acres and bought a buggy, a horse and buggy, and wagons and farm equipment and set up farming together. And then I know my father then went up into the hills into the gold mining country that it was Idaho City and Placerville and Pearl and all of these little towns way, way, way up in the hills, just a really, it was, I think it was probably a lot of them were silver mine, mining towns. And he would take the wagon with vegetables and fruit, whatever, and go sell up there. And so if the roads were, I mean, the roads. It was the weather. If the weather was bad, well, he'd set up his camp fire, and then he'd put the fire out, cover it with dirt and put his blankets on top of that, and then he'd sleep on there. And if it's snowing or raining, then he'd take his wagon, get the horse to pull the wagon over that little warm, it's a little, what is it? What would you call it? A little hot, instead of a hot water bottle, it kept him warm.

TR: Hot coals?

AN: Uh-huh.

TR: The hot coals from the fire?

AN: Yes. And he'd put the blankets on top of that, and then he'd have the cover over the top. Then he had the little motel in the mountains. So, yeah, it was very innovative.

TR: Was he mining for silver or prospecting for silver in the mountains?

AN: Oh, no. No, no. He would just take the vegetables that they would raise, and then he'd buy some fruit and sell it to the people who lived up there. The people who, they were maybe working in the silver mines or they just living up in the mountains, and so that's what he would do. Then my mother would wait for him to come home. Oh, dear. You know, she had children and, so then, they would, he would come down Freezeout Hill with the switchbacks. Oh, it was quite a hill there, and then we lived down below that. So then she would wait for him to come home, and she would wait to see his lights. I think probably a little lamp kerosene, not lamp, but a kerosene --

TR: A lantern.

AN: Yeah, a lantern. And so, yeah, that was quite a, Freezeout Hill was quite famous for being switchbacks and all like that. That reminds me, they bought, business must have been pretty good because they bought a Model T Ford. And so the Model T Fords, they had more power when you backed up. Did you know that? You ever heard that? But that's what they did. You back up a hill because you get more power somehow. It works that way.

TR: Seems a lot more dangerous.

AN: Yes. I wouldn't want to go up Freezeout Hill backwards.

TR: So these four men had a farm, and they were raising crops, and then your father would sell them to people who were either living in the mountains or prospecting in the mountains?

AN: Uh-huh.

TR: And so he would make frequent trips --

AN: Yes.

TR: -- with a horse and wagon?

AN: Yes, uh-huh, sometimes in bad weather, too, because it would be in the, after the crops are all harvested.

TR: Well, we kind of jumped here. Your father bought land with three other men.

AN: No. They rented.

TR: Oh, they rented.

AN: They rented.

TR: Okay. And they bought their equipment?

AN: Uh-huh.

TR: And then how did he meet your mother?

AN: Oh, it might have been through someone else in Japan who set it up. But anyway, he went back to meet her and visit with her, and they wrote back and forth when he came back. But then when he brought her back, he was very prudent because he sent her while he was in Seattle to a sewing school and a cooking school because she hadn't had to do that in Japan. They had a maid to do all those things, so that's what she did.

TR: So he sent her to school so she would have a skill?

AN: Uh-huh, so she could sew and cook.

TR: Do you know how long she was in Seattle before they then came out to this area?

AN: Oh, I have no idea, must have been less than a year. If I could read those letters, I could tell you, but they're written in Japanese.

TR: Do you know how old he was when he went back to Japan to marry her?

AN: Well, when he came to America, it was in 1903 probably. And then when he was in Missoula, it was 1905 when he started the diary. And he was, oh, about 19 when he came over here to America, so I don't know. He must have been in his early twenties, something like that. In Japan, they add a year on to the age.

TR: So you're a year old when you're born?

AN: Uh-huh, something like that.

TR: Do you know if he planned on staying in the United States or like a lot of Japanese men, planned on coming over here, making some money, and then going back to Japan and buying land, so there were kind of two points of view?

AN: No. I think he was planning on staying. I know, however, they, I remember my brothers, my older brothers, had the dual citizenship, not me. They didn't give me the dual citizenship, just my brothers. And then they took that out. They did away with that. So then they, that's, I'm sure that's when they decided they were going to stay here in America. I know he, he was very grateful for living here in America because I know when he was in Nyssa, he wanted to do something good for the United States because, some lasting good. He didn't know exactly what, but he was thinking of seed, in the way of seed. He raised the seed and worked with Northrup King in Boise, and he was very good friends with TA Waters and Northrup King, and so the seed really interested him. And in the summertime, it's so hard to take care of the seed, and so they, he had them harvest at night. So then he got this, the, what do you call, the can lights, the carbide lights, carbide lights on the miner's caps, and he bought that for the men to do the harvesting. In fact, I still have it out in the shop, those miner's caps.

TR: So the workers wore miner's caps so they could work on the seeds at night?

AN: Uh-huh, so the seed wouldn't shatter so badly.

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