Kawai History

Kawai History (by Bill Kawai)

Dad, Shichiro Kawai, was born February 28, 1888. While in school he took English as well. After finishing school he went to work in a bank where he replaced a position where the previous employee left because of TB. He contracted TB, so to rid himself of it he went to the family-owned forest where they made charcoal also. He cleared himself of TB then decided to come to the States. On an education visa, he came to Seattle, Washington, then went to Richmond, California where his brother, Goro, was working for florists. Soon they started raising carnations. While there, he improved carnations by crossbreeding. In 1916 he left the business to Uncle Goro and went to Montana to work for the Northern Pacific Railroads. He talked about how cold it was that winter. It was -15 to 20 degrees, so they could only work 15-minute shifts to keep from getting frostbite. To make the right length track all they had to do was to score it and drop it on a block and it would break there. To carry the track to the location it took four people. Dad was so short he had to reach up to hold it. I heard this big black fellow told him to just hang on so he wouldn’t get fired and carried his share of the weight. Around 1916 Dad was asked to serve in the U.S. Army for World War I but was rejected because he was too short and small. We have his 4F card somewhere. In 1917 he got a work crew together and came to Twin Falls, Idaho, and contracted to thin, weed and harvest beets for J. P. Marshall. Mr. Muratsuchi was one of the members of the crew. Mr. Marshall was so pleased with their honest work he offered to let them use his machinery and horses, when not in use at his farm, and encouraged them to start farming on their own. In 1918, Dad and Mr. Muratsuchi rented a farm near Rock Creek in the Twin Falls area. They built a house, farmed a year, then in the winter of 1919, Dad went to get married in Japan. He also helped Mrs. Muratsuchi come with them to the U.S. On April 12, 1920 Mary was born, and on September 9, 1921 George came to this world. In 1922 Dad and Mr. Muratsuchi parted. He rented a farm in Hanson, Idaho from Mr. Koenig. March 26, 1923 William was born. My name was chosen by Mrs. Koenig, who also named Ruby who came into the family May 10, 1924. In the winter of 1924 we moved to Kimberly, Idaho where Mr. Jane rented his 40 acres to us. That summer mother was pregnant again, but was helping dad put up hay by driving the horses pulling the wagon. The horses were spooked and she had a runaway. She thought if she headed for the trees at the edge of the field they would stop, but Dad yelled for her to pull one side of the reins so she did. The wagon went toward the road when the tongue of the wagon fell off the neck yoke and buried itself into the ground and the horses got loose from the wagon and took off down the road. Mom bounced hard enough on her bottom that she lost her baby. It was a boy. On September 5, 1928 Grace, named by Mary, joined our family. Dad delivered all of us at home. The doctor came later to make sure all was well, then made our birth certificates. Dad had studied the medical book his brother Dr. Rokuro had given him so he could do this. He said he had some trouble with Ruby’s birth since she was a breach baby. He said he pushed her back in then he saw her toes so he pinched her toes and pulled with all his might and luckily she was born. While we were farming the Jane place, Mary, George, and William started school at Kimberly. Before I started school our neighbor, Mr. Scott, came with a team of horses and a covered wagon to pick them up on his bus route. The year I started he acquired a truck, a motorized school bus. Even though Mary and George had been in school for several years, when I started school I only spoke Japanese. The first day of school I asked Mrs. Gill, my teacher, if I might go to the toilet. When she didn’t respond I started to cry and she shook me which made me cry more. She finally went to get George out to the hall and found out what I wanted. She immediately directed me toward the rest room. Ten or eleven years later she and her husband came to buy krout cabbage when we were growing vegetables. She asked me if I recognized her. I did not because when she shook me I thought she was a huge person. She was less than 5 feet tall. I was taller than her by then. Today it seems strange to me that I couldn’t understand English, but 76 years ago we had no radio or TV at home, and the spoken language was Japanese at home. One summer day Ruby and I were playing at a rock pile by the road when a car came and pulled into our neighbors’ driveway and a man came out and offered us candy which was in his car. He had us almost convinced when Mom just happened to come out of the house and he took off in a hurry. We were lucky and were told to never trust a stranger. In 1932 or 3, Dad started to grow vegetables to sell to the grocery stores, so, other than school, we all pitched in and worked toward his goal. He wanted to make enough money so we could go to Manchuria and buy a farm there. In those days there was a lot of prejudice against colored people, including Asians, who were not allowed to purchase land in the U.S. Before 1941 our fellow farmers, the Yamadas and the Muratsuchis, had gone back to Japan. Some of the Yamadas were in Manchuria. Dad decided to farm a few more years before going back. On December 7, 1941, the U.S. entered WW II and shortly thereafter we, the niseis, became people without a country. We were under curfew, our radios, knives over 6” long and guns (even our air rifles), and camera had to be taken to the sheriffs’ office and turned in. George says he took the BB rifle, bent it up , and threw it into the outhouse hole. Since the Japanese in the western states were allowed voluntary evacuation inland, we built a small house in our garden and our Aunt and cousins moved to Idaho. George and I rented 240 acres in Jerome that J.P. Marshall was taking care of besides the 40 acres we had in the Twin Falls area in 1944 and raised russet potatoes, dry beans, grain and alfalfa hay. In the fall of 1944, even though food was a very important commodity for the war effort, for very tasteless reason (the only good Jap is a dead Jap) quoted by the chairman of the Twin Falls draft board, George and I were drafted for military service. On May 2, 1945, I was in active service infantry basic training at Camp Walters near Mineral Wells, Texas. On the last week of our training, V.J. Day was declared. We finished our training, went to Norfolk, Virginia, boarded the Monticello, a Spanish cruise ship converted to a troop carrier, and went through the English Channel to Le Harve, France, in seven days. It was so packed we only had two meals a day and no meals the last day. We finally got off at 5:30 pm and the Red Cross was there with donuts, so I took three and started to eat, but it got stuck in my throat so I stretched my head way up and it finally went down. We were packed into cattle cars (train cars) with K1 rations, enough for three days, standing room only for half of us while the other half slept. It was very cold, so we put all the clothes we had on. Some of the fellows confiscated some coal from other cars on the track when our train stopped and built a fire so we all looked like clowns before we reached our destination, from the soot. We were put on border guard between the American and Russian occupation zone. After a couple of weeks many of us were transferred into Quartermaster Grave Registration Company. I was put on morgue duty. At the first opportunity, I became a truck driver. We would go out a week at a time to cover our assigned area to find the graves, mark it on the map and, through our personal interpreter, try to get all the information we could about the servicemen. They were mostly air men, crews of bombers and fighters. After we covered all of the American and English occupation zones, we went to Czechoslovakia which was the Russian occupation zone. We were stationed in Praha (Prague). I became the mailman for the company so I would drive to Regansburg, Germany, to pick up mail one day, then drive back the next day. I was on the road every day while in Czechoslovakia. In late October of 1946, our company made a convoy and drove 28 hours without stopping to Bremerhaven, Germany, where we boarded a Victory Ship (Tub) and came home to New York via the North Sea and the English Channel. From New York we took a train to Fort Lewis, Washington, and I became a free man again on November 20, 1946. Before we left for service, J.P. Marshall told us his homeplace where Dad started farm work would be waiting for us to farm. We farmed the 200 acres for three years. Mc Veys also promised us a new Farmall M tractor, a very scarce item, and we acquired it. And the Buick dealership promised us a new car, also a scarce item, and we acquired it. In the fall of 1949 we bought the homeplace in Marsing, Idaho. While farming it we bought several farms, the 10N 80, Weitz 200 (pump farm in Caldwell), the Opaline 100, and the Sircin 80. By selling and trading later, we finally owned one section of land in one place. Since we have no family farmers, we sold the farm on May 24, 1993 to Winding Brook Corporation, then rented from them and farmed it for several years until we retired.