<Begin Segment 6>

TR: Did your brothers go to Japanese school too?

AN: Yes, they did. Yeah. We went to Japanese school, and we also, my brother Roy, we took piano lessons. Roy and I took piano lessons, and we had a big old Dodge, a new Dodge sedan shaped like this.

TR: Square.

AN: Uh-huh, yes. I have a picture up here. And he was only about twelve or so. Maybe he wasn't twelve, maybe he was eleven, and he wasn't very big. He was just a little guy, and he'd get back of that steering gear and peek over the top and he said, to go to our piano lessons. He says, "You get in the back." So he was in the front and I was in the back, two little kids in that great big Dodge sedan.

TR: He drove?

AN: Uh-huh. Oh, yes, he drove. He drove, it was only about four miles to where we took piano lessons. And in fact, at that same time, he was about twelve. He decided he was going to drive, ride his bicycle to Cascade. Oh, I guess it's about 100 miles or so through the woods. It was really, to get, it was, it was quite a distance and a lot of it was, very few houses along the way. It was just up in the mountains, really. So he just decided, my parents just, they just fought that for the longest time, but he insisted he was going to go, so he did. He did. He took his bicycle and rode that distance to Mr. Takeuchi's house. See that's the man that they were partners with, Mr. Takeuchi, when they were kids.

TR: Did he make it?

AN: Yes. Yeah, he made it. Roy could.

TR: How long did it take?

AN: Oh, I don't know. Yeah. I didn't hear the particulars. No one told me.

TR: How far were you from the nearest town?

AN: Nine miles to Nampa from where we lived.

TR: And so how often would you go in and do shopping?

AN: Oh, I think we'd go in about once a week. My mother would make bread. You know, there was three boys. And then in addition when we go shopping, she'd buy some Bonton bakery bread, can imagine, wasn't very good for us.

TR: If you had animals on the farm, did you slaughter animals for meat too?

AN: Uh-huh. Yeah. I remember they would slaughter the pigs. Yeah. We'd have the pork. I don't remember killing the cows. I don't think so. It was just the pigs, I believe. I think it's, those cows I think were close to my dad's heart, didn't want to eat them.

TR: Well, also it's pretty unusual to use dairy cattle for meat.

AN: Uh-huh.

TR: Well, it sounds like you had a pretty well-rounded farm. I think of a lot of the farms here in Ontario as being onion farms or beef farms, but it sounds like you had a complete running farm with everything a farm would ever want.

AN: Uh-huh, I think so, with the dairy cattle, so that was unusual. You saw very, very few Japanese with the dairy farm.

TR: Did the milk truck come to your farm to pick up milk or cream?

AN: Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah.

TR: Do you remember anything about that?

AN: Well, I remember it was, we had a milk cart, and I remember them putting the milk cans, those big milk cans on it and taking it out to, for the milk truck to come along, and we used to take rides in it, that I remember, in the cart.

TR: What were your responsibilities on the farm at this time?

AN: Well, mostly helping in the house and the housework. And there were times when we would go out and, go out and weed the onions. And I was used to tell, say that no matter kind of a job you get, it will be good compared to this, weeding onions, very boring. But it was so nice to hear the meadow lark sing. It was nice. I remember in relation to that, when some of the people who in camp came out to our place and where it was, under the trees, and they'd, oh, listen to the birds. You know, that was unusual to hear the birds singing because they were in the camp and hadn't heard the birds sing at all for a long time. So that was unusual to hear, and I thought, well, what they had gone through to really enjoy the birds singing.

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