Densho Digital Archive - Jim Tsugawa Interview (denshovh-tjim

<Begin Segment 16>

AC: Did you speak very much, once you were out of camp, about camp or what that meant or anything like that?

JT: No, not at all. In Boise I went to a grade school, my fifth and sixth grade, Longfellow grade school. And in the springtime... no, in the wintertime it snowed. And so there was no throwing snowballs on the way to and from school. But, of course, me, I had to throw snowballs at this one kid, and I'll be damned if he didn't squeal on me. And the principal called me into the office and she gave me a big swat with a wooden paddle, I remember that. It kind of smarted. [Laughs] And then springtime they would hold a marble tournament. And you're looking at the fifth grade, sixth grade marble champ from Longfellow grade school. And I won, I think, an agate each year.

That was... then somewhere I think going to the YMCA, the pharmacist at the Y sponsored me to go to the YMCA where you could swim and play basketball. And I think I met these kids from different grade schools, and Flip Clifford was one, and, you know, I'd say, "Flip, get your ten other guys and we'll meet on the high school football field, and we'll play tackle ball." And there was a kid named Stanton Tate from Garfield grade school, we'd do the same thing. I don't know who won or anything, but Flip went on to play college ball at the University of Idaho. And I still think he holds the longest punt ever in Idaho's history. I can't remember how far. But that was that. And in camp, I must have been a football freak, but in camp, there was this kid named Tabo Watanabe, and I told Tabo, I said, "You get ten other guys and I'll get ten guys and we'll play tackle ball." And I don't remember who won, but later on, when I played tennis, this guy that I played tennis with was from Seattle and that's where Tabo is from, Seattle. And he went back to Seattle. And I just happened to ask Lori, I said, "Lori, you ever recall a kid named Tabo Watanabe?" And he said, "Do I know Tabo Watanabe?" He says he called him Toby. Toby Watanabe became an all-city running back for, I think it was Garfield High School or something. But he became quite an athlete. [Laughs] So that's my activity in camp.

AC: So you became a marble champion as well as really a football aficionado?

JT: Yeah, I guess I liked to play football.

AC: So after, I guess, how long were you in Boise? It was fifth grade, sixth grade?

JT: When was the war over? 1945? Yeah, when the war was over in '45, my brothers got out of the service. Nobody had any skills, nobody was educated, but Henry had farmed five acres of strawberries prior to going into the army. So they rented thirty-two acres from a man named Bill Hamil in the Bethany area. And they had no money to speak of, so they plowed the ground with horse, Bill had horses, and they harrowed the ground with horses, disked the ground with horses, planted strawberries, and they bought an old army truck, put wooden benches in there, and that's what I did. When we moved back, I was, what, a seventh grader, eighth grader. Yeah, I was an eighth grader, went to a school called Union grade school. It was a two-room school, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth, one, two, three, four. And there was a two-holer out about thirty yards out there, and I think that building was heated by a potbelly stove again, and that was quite an experience going from Boise, Idaho, in junior high school, maybe eight hundred kids, to this small school. But we did have a gym, by gosh, so this kid said, "You used to come over, or we used to come over to your gym from Skyline grade school and play basketball against each other." But '47 we combined Bethany grade school, Union grade school, and we graduated together. Those were the days.

AC: So how many school, I mean, kids were in Bethany grade school?

JT: No, I was in Union grade school.

AC: Union grade school. How many students were in Union grade school?

JT: God, I don't remember. There was only four eighth graders.

AC: Four eighth graders?

JT: That's four eighth graders, and then I don't remember the younger ones. And then in '47, yeah, then I just worked in the strawberry fields. After I got out of college and stuff, any kind of work was nothing compared to doing strawberries where you worked from morning to night, you know.

AC: What kind of things did you have to do to take care of the strawberry fields?

JT: Well, at that time, they did what they call, they set runners. Mother plant, mother plant, and they would send out runners. And you planted two and planted two between them. And you're going around the field on your knees and did that, pulled the excess ones off. Now they just rake 'em in with a tractor, you know, they do it that way. And then I did a lot of walking behind old Brownie, a big old brown horse, cultivator. And me and Brownie walked a lot of miles behind there. [Laughs] I could remember one time we hit a, must have been a yellowjacket nest in the ground, and me and Brownie took off down that row and we outran those jackets. But I don't know if I could harness a horse now. I put that old big harness on and put the bridle in his mouth. And that was, what, eighth grade? Yeah, it was eighth grade.