Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Yutaka Inokuchi Interview
Narrator: Yutaka Inokuchi
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: March 3, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-iyutaka-01-0004

Well, I always tell people that we didn't feel deprived being raised in a plantation. I don't know about the other plantations but I think it's the same, you know, they say that when you're poor you don't what is poor, what poor means. That's the way it was. I mean, we had enough to eat, I mean, you know.

TI: Well, and everyone around you was the same.

YI: We all had our own garden to raise vegetable, most of us raised chicken and so as far as, you know, we were not deprived food-wise. And the plantation provided a lot for the employees. Well, when I was born we didn't have electricity, we were using kerosene lamps so naturally the stove was also a kerosene stove. If you wanted your own bathhouse, a furoba, plantation would, providing that, you know, had enough space in the yard, they'll come and build you one furoba, you know. And during the off season, you know, when they're not... they have what they call an off season where they have to do the, repair the mill. So that's when they don't do any harvesting. That's when the employees used to go and do maintenance, the homes, or go to cut firewood to distribute to the employees, deliver kerosene and you know, somehow we all ended up with fifty gallon drums that they would come and fill.

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