Interviews

1. Going back to Hawaii

2. 1920 labor strike

3. Picture brides and karifufu

4. Racial make-up of plantation camps

5. Clothes of plantation workers

6. Surviving after father's death

7. Washing for Filipino bachelors

8. Kids working hard

9. Bombing of Pearl Harbor

10. Helping soldiers

11. Brother leaves for war, survival

12. Okinawan discrimination

13. First day of school

14. Doing chores

15. Eating cold rice

Barbara Kawakami

An expert researcher and scholar on Japanese immigrant clothing.

Surviving after father's death

Life changed drastically when my father died. Until then, we had a fairly comfortable life. And so my mother, she was pregnant with her ninth child. My father was 63 and my mother was 39. You can see the age difference. And so, she had to work immediately, but she was pregnant. And she couldn’t speak any English or understand English. So, she thought maybe she could work as a domestic. Usually many women worked on the plantation for the Caucasian families—maids. But, in her condition and with so many children—eight children—she couldn’t work as a maid because she couldn’t speak English. And so she finally took in laundry from the plantation bachelors. And because the Filipino people lived nearby, that was her livelihood. We really owe it to them that we were able to survive.

And it was interesting how the plantation manager, the assistant, when a person became a widow, they would give $15 a month pension. And so, in my mother’s situation, because she had such a large family, a relative who was a supervisor for the irrigation group approached the manager and told him the situation that, “How can Mrs. Oyama, with eight children—and she’s expecting her ninth child—how can she survive with $15 a month?” So the manager, Mr. Lorenge(?), was very compassionate. Was it Mr. Lorenge? Anyway, they gave her $25 a month. And they gave my mother a choice that, “Would you rather have a $1000 to cover expenses for the funeral and immediate expenses to survive, or $25 until the baby whose born would reach a social security age?” So my mother was very wise. She had only a third grade education back in the village. But, she thought it was better to receive the $25 a month. And so, that really helped her with taking laundry and all that. Somehow, we survived.

cleaning families laundry plantations

Date: February 19, 2004

Location: Hawai'i, US

Interviewer: Lisa Itagaki, Krissy Kim

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

Interviewee Bio

Barbara Kawakami was born in 1921 in Okkogamura, Kumamoto, Japan, in a feudal farmhouse that had been her family’s home for more than 350 years. She was raised on the Oahu Sugar Plantation in Oahu, Hawai’i, and worked as a dressmaker and homemaker before earning her high school diploma, Bachelor of Science in Textile & Clothing, and Master of Arts in Asian Studies—after the age of 50.

In her senior year, she began to research the clothing that immigrants wore on the plantation for a term paper. Finding there was relatively little academic research in this area, Barbara embarked on a project to document and collect original plantation clothing as well as the stories behind the ingenuity of the makers. Over the course of fifteen years, Barbara recorded more than 250 interviews with aging Issei women and men and their Nisei children. She captured their lives, the struggles of immigration, and conditions working and living on the plantation. Importantly, she documented the stories behind the ingenuity of these Issei women as they slowly adapted their traditions to suit the needs of plantation life. Her knowledge of the Japanese language, having grown up on the plantation, and her extensive background as a noted dressmaker, helped many Issei women feel comfortable about sharing the untold stories of their lives as picture brides. From her extensive research, she published the first book on the topic, Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawai‘i 1885-1941 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993).

A noted storyteller, author, and historian, Barbara continues to travel to Japan as well as throughout the United States to give lectures regarding plantation life and clothing. She is widely recognized as the foremost authority on Japanese immigrant clothing and has served as a consultant to Hawaii Public Television, Waipahu Cultural Garden Park, Bishop Museum, the Japanese American National Museum, and to the movie production of Picture Bride. (February 19, 2004)