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TI: By 1931, my father had four sons, and he felt that he would rather have his boys grow up in the country rather than in the city. So in spite of the fact that he had a very successful business, he decided to move to Oregon, and he sold the business to a family named the Fukuis, and we moved to Banks, Oregon. I can still recall the trip. It took us like ten or twelve hours to drive from Tacoma to Banks. The roads were two lane roads. It was very winding. And I can recall, we arrived in Banks about midnight, and we stayed with a family by the name of Kagas, and apparently my father knew Mr. Kaga because they were from the same ken. I remember that this was in the fall of the year because they had a farm, and I can remember helping digging potatoes which was the first time I've been on a farm like this, and it was quite a revelation. I can remember my mother making French fries at that time. We stayed with the Kagas until our house was ready which was about seven, eight miles away from here, a place called Hillside. This was a beautiful little valley, and it was a center of prune orchards, walnut orchards, dairy farming, and my father rented thirty acres on which to raise strawberries. Well, transferring schools from Tacoma which was the Central Grade School to Hillside School was quite a shock. They had a one-room grade school and one teacher, and she taught all eight grades. There were probably twenty-five or thirty students in all. But, we made the transition, accommodated, and I can still recall we were pretty, my brothers and I were pretty ratty bunch of boys, and we were called on the carpet a number of times particularly for swearing, and we were threatened to be kicked out of school. [Laughs]

But nonetheless, we got accustomed to the school, and we introduced baseball to the school, and I was the pitcher, and my brother, Yosh, was the catcher, and brother, Ken, played shortstop. We didn't have enough boys to fill all the spots, so we had three or four girls playing with us. But it was quite remarkable that in spite of a few number of people we had, we played games against other grade schools such as Gales Creek and Thatcher, and we usually won. And the other thing that I still remember is that in traveling to Gales Creek or to Thatcher which is a neighboring school, I took the entire team and others, too, on the back of our truck, it was a stake-body truck, and I would drive the truck to the other schools. And to think that I was doing this when I was in grade school, you know, it's unthinkable in this age.

Any rate, it was nice growing up in the country. It was quite a change from a city life. One of the things I remember is our neighbors had all kinds of apple trees and pear trees, and you would sit up in the trees and eat apples, go pick berries. We would go hiking into the woods, and we found a number of Indian arrowheads, and we had quite a collection. We would go hike over the mountain which is about I'd say five, six hundred feet, hike over the mountain, go down to Gales Creek, and that's where we learned to swim in pools, and I can still remember Gales Creek had all kinds of trout that we swam among.

The farm did not go too well for my father because it was during the Depression. We had hired Filipino laborers, and we had a couple of, kind of scary traumatic events since I was only about twelve. One night a mob of people came up with torches and demanded that we get rid of the workers, and it was quite a scaring event because there was quite a large mob. Finally, my father agreed that he would watch them closer so that they would not be roaming around the countryside and then agreed to let them stay. The other scary event was that one year the berry pickers went on a strike, and this was quite threatening, and it was quite scary for us boys. But nevertheless, we enjoyed the country and living in the country. We built a treehouse, we did our own gardening. And because the winters were colder at that time, we would always have snow, and so we built our own sleds, and I can remember making my own skis out of lumber fours, so we had quite a time growing up.

Well, after finishing grade school there in 1934, I went to Forest Grove High School. I think I was the only Japanese at the school. But nevertheless, I went out for sports and played baseball. I played varsity baseball; and eventually, I was elected the freshman class president. One of the courses that I still remember which was an excellent course was a course in agriculture, and this is a course where we learned how to judge animals, how to judge quality cows, dairy cows, beef cows, beef cattle, how to judge sheep, chicken. We learned how to ascertain butter fat in milk. We did the test ourselves. We went out and learned different kinds of trees, shrubs, and learned how to splice rope, tie knots. It was an excellent course. Unfortunately, in 1935, we moved from Hillside to a place called Laurelview. This was about six, seven miles south of Hillsboro. And as a result, I had to transfer to Hillsboro High School as a sophomore, and I finished out my high school years there. Here, I met the Iwasaki family and the Tsugawa family, and Art Iwasaki was in my class, and George was a year behind us. I played sports here too. I played varsity baseball and junior varsity football. I could still remember that I had to ride my bike home every night since the bus had already left. So at Hill High, I became the sports editor for the school manual, and so I got to travel with the athletic team.

[Interruption]

DF: And growing up playing the samurai game, will you explain what the samurai game --

TI: Well, we carried wooden swords and chose up sides, and we would hide, seek, and then use the wooden swords to simulate battle.

DF: And the names you mentioned, those are names of different characters?

TI: They are famous shoguns. Well in 1936, my father moved again to an area called Helvetia meaning Switzerland, and we rented a large acreage of sixty acres from a Swiss Issei, Ruffner, Fred Ruffner. And we had a very good luck year, and my father harvested a bumper crop of strawberries which amounted to five tons per acre which was unheard of because the average was around two, two and a half tons. In 1939, because we increased our acreage to seventy acres and because they were so busy, I had to drop out of school. I had attended University of Oregon in 1938 for one year. And at that time, my father suggested that I enroll as a pre-law major, and so I did. But of course, the first year or two in college is pretty much general course. But in 1939 as I say, we were so busy that I was, I had to drop out of school to help, and the big problem was to obtain labor, berry pickers.

And I don't recall where I got this lead, but I went up to Vancouver Island, Canada, and contacted an Indian tribe at a place called Nanaimo, and I met the chief and made arrangements to bring the tribe down to our farm. So I had to make arrangements for approximately 150 people to travel down to Victoria by bus and then by ferry to Seattle and then by train to Portland and then by bus and truck out to our farm. And we had already had a berry camp where we had what we call bunkhouses. But of course, the bulk of the camp was made up of tents, and we had to supply wooden stoves, water facilities, and so on. And the Indians, of course, their diet consisted mainly of salmon, and so I had to find a source for them, and there was a fish cannery. I believe it was in Washougal, Washington, and I would go over there every several days and get huge, large boxes of salmon head which were being discarded, and of course, the Indians thought this was the best, and so we got along very well. At the end of the season, harvest season, I took them back again the same route back to Nanaimo, and this was quite a learning experience for me because I was only eighteen or seventeen.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.