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

Kawakami,Barbara

An expert researcher and scholar on Japanese immigrant clothing.

Doing chores

All of us, she had assigned chores for us to do. My brothers had to tend to the garden. And every morning, it was my job to feed the chickens. I would chop the green vegetables and mix with the leftover rice and put the feed [and] mix it together. And I had to feed the chickens and pick the eggs. And sometimes, when I dropped, oh, I had a spanking from my mother on my okole because she got so upset because she never let us eat the eggs. She couldn’t afford to let us eat the eggs because she had to sell the eggs. So, that was hard.

And I had to make lunch for all my brothers and sisters. And because, after my sister left home, I became the oldest daughter. So I had lot of responsibility. I was nine years old. I started cooking for the family because my mother was in the laundry washhouse all day long. And so, I used to cook simple meals because those days we didn’t have steaks or we didn’t know how to cook spaghetti. We never saw spaghetti, right, until I started working as a maid. But, food was simple and lot of vegetable dishes. I used maybe little bacon to stir fry, you know. And so, I did the cooking. And then in the morning, I made lunch for my five siblings.

And every morning—you know, chorizo is so expensive today. I want to eat but I can’t afford it—it’s so expensive.When we were kids, chorizo, my mother would buy a huge can. And every day, that’s the easiest thing for me to cook. So I would slice it and fry it crisp and put it in the bento. We bought the rectangle can. And so I remember one day, Ms. Mendonza(?), my Portuguese teacher, held up my bento in front of the class. I think I was in the fourth grade by then—fourth or fifth. She held up the bento can, said, “Look at Fusako’s lunch. Every day she brings this chorizo and it’s not nourishing for her.” So, I was so embarrassed.

families meals 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)