<Begin Segment 3>

LT: And did you help out as a kid on your father's strawberry farm?

TT: Yeah. After school I used to come and help out, and then in the summertime, used to help out all summer long.

LT: And what kinds of jobs did you have on this, in the strawberry field after school?

TT: Well, when the strawberry was ripe, we used to pick 'em, before they were ripe berries, hoeing the strawberry, hoeing the weed. And the other thing that they did, I remember they used to get weevils or something, and used to put some kind of bait in the strawberry, at the crown of the strawberry plant to kill the weevils.

LT: What do you mean by crowning the strawberry plant?

TT: No, I mean the plants are up like this, and they used to put 'em in the middle of it, you know, where all the leaves come out, in the middle there, just... it looked like a dried apple or something, must have had some kind of poison or something in there, so we used to put a little bit of that in each strawberry plant. That and later on, after berry is harvested, they used to, what you call they used to top, cut off all the leaves or whatever you call it. And I don't know why they did that, they used to cut 'em all off and put 'em in a row. After, they'd just let it sit there and rake it into the middle of the row. Then late in August, after it all dried up, we used to go burn it. Usually did it at nighttime.

LT: And why was that?

TT: I don't know. I guess they... I guess they just had to get rid of it all, all that stuff, the leaves, all that stuff, I don't know. Then I think later on they probably didn't do that anymore. Some of 'em used to have a machine that kind of just, when it pulled over the top of the plants and mulch all the leaves, so I don't think they used to cut 'em by hand, each plant by hand. So I remember doing that.

LT: And as a kid, you and your brother and sister helped to do that work on the strawberry fields?

TT: Yeah. Well, my sisters, they didn't hardly do anything, but I was about the only one, and my brother was too young. So I don't remember them working.

LT: Well, what did you think as a kid, you were the eldest son and the second oldest of four children in your family. What was it like to work so long on your family's farm?

TT: Well, I don't know. Maybe it was expected of us to help out. [Laughs] We did everything we could to help out. I didn't think much about it, just another thing to do.

LT: Okay. Well, let me go back and ask about your brothers and your sisters, because there were five children in all. Is that correct?

TT: Uh-huh.

LT: Okay. And when you were children at home, what language did you speak?

TT: Well, we must have, we must have spoke Japanese, and our mother, that's all she, she didn't know English. I guess we just learned what she taught us, I don't know. Because I know we didn't speak Japanese among our kids, I mean, the kids didn't speak Japanese to each other. I don't remember ever speaking Japanese to my sister. So I don't know how we got along. [Laughs]

LT: So when you went to school in first grade, what language did you speak?

TT: Well, it wasn't Japanese.

LT: Okay, so where did you learn English if your mother and your father spoke Japanese? How did you learn English?

TT: I don't know. It must have been from playing with my friends. I used to play with this guy all the time, and maybe I learned from him, or my older sister maybe learned it before I did, so might have learned it that way. But I just can't... I don't know how we ever started speaking English. Must have been grade school.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.