<Begin Segment 14>

TM: Your grandparents back on the farm in Washington, were they, did they return at this point, or where did they end up?

FP: Yes, they went back to Kent, Washington.

TM: Okay.

FP: Right. And it had been a farm that they had, they had purchased through my eldest uncle. Because the only people that could hold property were those people with American citizenship. So for many years, Uncle Tsuyoshi was a young teen, they would worry and worry and worry, they're going to come take the farm away from us. And so that's how they had acquired that farm, because there was a law. And I don't know in Washington or if it was U.S., but along the West Coast, there was a lot of discrimination, right, and they could not buy property (without American citizenship).

TM: Preventing, yes, the Issei to own property, the alien land laws up and down the West Coast states, very restrictive. So in this case...

FP: Right, so it's often put in the son's name.

TM: Nisei son, American-born son.

FP: Right, right.

TM: So your grandparents had a farm to return back to in Kent. Do you know who took care of that farm while they were away?

FP: I don't remember. I don't remember. Probably a caretaker neighbor, I think.

TM: While you were in Minneapolis, did you ever spend time ever, did you ever go out to the farm in Kent, a summer there maybe?

FP: Yes. When we got back, the summer that we got back.

TM: When you returned back to Portland.

FP: Yes, uh-huh, so that would be about '46 or '47, right in there, you know. We did go back... well, I was sent out to help out with the farming, so I learned to really appreciate the land and the farms then, you know, 'cause, my goodness, we would be, it was a truck farm. And we would pick radishes, all sit there together, the women would sit there together picking radishes, and the men would be running around the field with the irrigation pipe that squirted water. And there was a little stream going by that we could use for irrigation. And they would be moving that, or they would be on the tractor spraying fertilizer or whatever. And I think Grandpa was smart enough to, the extension agent would come and visit every so often and give Grandpa advice. And there, of course, Uncle Tsuyoshi was the one that spoke English fairly well, fairly well, right. So they got the extension agents in some way or other... well, I think regularly, the extension agent from the university probably made the rounds of the larger farms. So the women would sit there all day and pick radishes and what else? Package lettuce maybe, and the men would be doing the heavy work like the pipes I'm talking about. And the real big nappas, they would be hacking the big nappas down and packing them into cases and so forth, right.

TM: So just to put this in context, your family is living in Minneapolis, and in '47, actually, returned to Portland that summer.

FP: Yes, around there.

TM: Yeah, around that time, that summer was the first summer you spent at your grandparents' farm up in Kent.

FP: Yes, yes. And it was just an eye-opener to me after being in camp, and in a little tiny, well, it wasn't that tiny of an apartment, but, you know, being confined to an apartment. And all of a sudden the world opened up and just this green came about.

TM: It must have been an amazing summer.

FP: Right, right.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.