<Begin Segment 5>

LT: As a kid, when there was something that you or your brothers or your sisters wanted to have, how did your family respond to that?

TT: Well, they treated us pretty good. I don't remember ever arguing with him or anything like that.

LT: Okay. When your friends had toys or bicycles and you wanted them, what happened in your family?

TT: Well, my dad was pretty good at that. Maybe it's because I used to help out a lot on the farm, but he used to... he did buy me a bicycle. And I guess I used to keep telling him I wanted a bicycle or something, and eventually he bought me one. He treated me pretty good, I guess.

LT: Okay, it sounds like you worked hard on the farm and you were able to do that.

TT: Yeah, pretty hard.

LT: Okay. What kind of bicycle was it, and where did you buy it? How did you use it?

TT: Well, there wasn't too many bicycles, those days. So when he decided to buy me one, we went to Portland to buy it at Sears-Roebuck. And it was in a crate. Most of it, parts of it you had to put it together, well, just the handlebar and the pedal part, the rest was all ready. And brought it home on the side of the car, had the running board, and brought it home. There wasn't too many other kids with bicycle those days. All I remember is this one kid that I used to play with, he's a couple year younger than me. Then this one guy, kid was my age, and after I bought my bicycle, his dad bought him a bicycle. So we were the only two in the bicycle in that grade school. And we'd ride it to school. So that's about it.

LT: Okay. There's a saying in Japan, kodomo no tame ni.

TT: Huh?

LT: There's a saying in Japan, kodomo no tame ni.

TT: Yeah.

LT: Did you see that at all in the way that you were raised, that parents sacrificed for their children?

TT: I didn't see it at that time, but later on, kind of realized that. Because he'd buy me that thing we probably really couldn't afford, but then he eventually bought it for me.

LT: Were there any other ways that your mother and your father bought things for you that perhaps they couldn't afford but they did so because you were their kids and you worked?

TT: Well, the only thing I remember, I don't know why I wanted a violin, I guess I saw somebody playing a violin, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I wanted that, and so I kind of kept telling him I want a violin, and he finally bought me one. Then I remember he bought me a ski one time, one year, because I went skiing quite a bit on the neighbor hillside, I used to go there by myself and just ski down that hill there. So he bought me a ski. That was about it, I guess.

LT: Thank you.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.