Interviews

1. Sings traditional plantation labor song (ho-le ho-le bushi) in Japanese and Hawaiian

2. Days I spent aching for Japan in tears (Japanese)

3. Tough work on plantation (Japanese)

4. Leaving children in daycare all day to work (Japanese)

5. How we were treated on plantation after the attack on Pearl Harbor (Japanese)

Haruo Kasahara

(b.1900) Issei plantation worker in Hawai'i.

Tough work on plantation (Japanese)

(Japanese) At the time when we came here, we worked 10 hours, for 55 cents per day. We got 55 cents a day. I worked outside – cutting the grass, watering trees, and making floral wreaths – it was a pleasing work – I was doing that kind of work all day. I worked 10 hours, from 6 in the morning till 4:30 in the evening. I had 30 minutes of kaukau time (lunch time).

generations Hawai'i immigrants immigration Issei Japan migration United States

Date: June and July, 1991

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Robert Nakamura, Karen Ishizuka

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Haruo Kasahara was born in 1900 in Japan and left Fukushima-ken for Hawaii in 1919 to join her parents. She recalled being so homesick for Japan, she cried every day. She worked on a plantation in the fields cutting grass and watering the sugar cane for a wage of 55 cents a day.

Mrs. Kasahara was married in 1922. She met her husband by Omiai. He also worked at the plantation. For him, it was his second marriage. His first wife had died and left him with two children. When Mrs. Kasahara married him, his children were in Japan. Mrs. Kasahara gave birth to six children, however two died at very young ages. (July 1991)