<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Now with your brothers or other siblings, what kind of things would you do when you didn't have chores or school? Did you have, like, adventures on the island, or did you do a lot of fishing?

YS: Yeah, yeah, we tried to do fishing. And then go to the beach, and we used to dig clams and crabs and stuff, they have geoducks. Yeah, that used to be good, geoducks.

TI: And so how would you dig geoducks back then?

YS: Just by hand. Two or three people dig, start digging like crazy, then they'd jump down and grab it.

TI: So how would you stop -- when you start digging, I've done geoduck, it just starts caving in.

YS: Yeah, it starts caving in, see.

TI: So we'd actually get a garbage can or something to help the stop the...

YS: We used to dig fast and then just when you're about to see the neck, you go down and grab it.

TI: Someone would hold it and the rest would keep digging?

YS: Yeah. So sometime it would be caving in, sometime you lose it.

TI: Yeah, geoduck was always harder.

YS: You did that?

TI: Yeah, I did geoduck when I was a kid, and I remember it just caving in. And that was different, because from like razor clam digging, it was easier because...

YS: Yeah, a lot easier.

TI: Because even though they would go down, it wouldn't cave in as much.

YS: Yeah. Because geoduck, you have to dig three or four feet.

TI: Yeah, you had to go really deep with geoduck.

YS: See, we used to take a wooden paddle and follow the neck down. That was against the law. [Laughs]

TI: So how would you do that? A wooden handle, you mean down the hole?

YS: Yeah, and the hole keeps going down, so then you could know where to dig.

TI: And that was against the law?

YS: That was against the law.

TI: Why was that?

YS: I don't know. You can't do that.

TI: But then that's how you can track where they're going.

YS: Yeah, track where they're going.

TI: That's interesting. I'll have to try that next time I dig geoduck. [Laughs]

YS: Pretty hard to find it now, though.

TI: And then crabbing, was it just like crab pots that you would do?

YS: Well, no, we used to go alongside the log and then kind of scratch it.

TI: Oh, so not even, so you would actually try to find them and then, but shallow water you would go...

YS: Later on they started walking in the water and see it. But them days, we used to just pole alongside of a log sometimes.

TI: And back then, did they have oysters at all?

YS: Yeah, we had oysters. Yeah, we used to get that, too.

TI: Yeah. No, I used to love all that.

YS: Oh yeah, they were good.

TI: And then just, yeah, salmon fishing in the Sound. Now, would you go out in boats, or would you do it from the shore?

YS: No, we didn't have a boat. Off the docks.

TI: Were you able to catch salmon off the docks?

YS: Yeah, sometimes.

TI: Or more just perch?

YS: Perch and rock cod and shiners. Them days, most of it was off the docks, because nobody had a boat.

TI: So that would be hard to catch salmon.

YS: Yeah, it was pretty hard to catch salmon. You see 'em there off the docks, but they won't bite.

TI: The other thing that my family does is the squidding, you jig for squid. Did you do that at all?

YS: No, I never did do that.

TI: They'd do it off the docks in Seattle.

YS: They do that now. They said, yeah, a lot of people do that, I guess. We never did do that, squid.

TI: How about things like mushroom picking? Did you ever do matsutake?

YS: No. There used to be, but then there wasn't any more.

TI: So Bainbridge Island didn't have...

YS: No, it was not quite high enough, I guess.

TI: Yeah, I was going to ask you if you had any secret spots on Bainbridge Island. [Laughs]

YS: Yeah.

TI: That's like one of the family secrets of the Northwest is where you go find your mushrooms, and good salmon fishing holes, too, where people like that. So I want to ask you just how, like, the race relationships between the Japanese and the Caucasians and the Filipinos, how did people get along with each other?

YS: It was pretty good, I thought. We found out different after the war started, but they, some of these people, they really call you "Jap" and everything else. But most of the time it was pretty good, I thought.

TI: So before the war you didn't really see any of that.

YS: No, not too much.

TI: It seemed like it was pretty good.

YS: But Filipino and us, yeah, we got along pretty good, too, really.

TI: Now on Bainbridge Island, was there any places where, like, the Japanese and Filipinos weren't welcome? Like in Seattle there would be, like at movie theaters, they couldn't go through the main entrance, or the swimming pool, the Crystal Pool, they couldn't swim there. So there were some places the Japanese couldn't go to. Was it similar like that in Bainbridge Island?

YS: I didn't think there was on Bainbridge Island too much of that.

TI: So it seemed like it was pretty good.

YS: It was pretty good, I thought. You know, going to school and stuff, they were pretty good, most of them. But like I say, after things, you found out what some of them were like.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.