Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Rae Takekawa Interview
Narrator: Rae Takekawa
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Vancouver, Washington
Date: May 8, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-trae-01-0025

RT: Well, a typical day, we get up at dawn and we would get out to the fields -- I don't even know how we got there, 'cause we didn't have a vehicle of any kind, probably we got a ride from Mr. Blatter in his truck. We would all go out to the field and it would be very cold and chilly, not uncomfortably cold, but nevertheless, it was cool, and we would start the job of topping beets. We used a machete-like like knife, and on the end of the knife is a hook, a steel hook, and you stab the beet with the hook and then you chop it off with the, with the machete knife. And then you throw the beets into a little pile, because we would each take two rows. And then we would pile the beets into the center of these four rows, so two of us would be more or less lined up, and we would take four rows at a time, two apiece. And then the truck would come through, in between these rows of beets, and three people on a side -- and I can see now why you had to have six -- would throw the beets into the truck. You had to be careful you didn't throw too hard. Yeah, sometimes get a little rambunctious. But that was the harvesting of beets. And we did it from early morning until, because of the days being shorter, yeah, from, from the time that you could see, and finish when it started getting dusk.

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