I would like to tell you about Mrs. Brown. She was a true friend during the war. She was very good to us and helped us any time we needed help. They had 3 children, Nita Lee, Geraldine, and Tom. Later Mr. Brown passed away and she married Mr. Blonquist and lived in Coalville, but we stayed close friends for many years.
I guess my husband found out about this place in Murray when he went to the wholesale Market. There was a Japanese family called Kato that lived there and they decided to move back to California. They came to Utah from Califronia when they had to evacuate and after the war ended, they had a chance to go back. When we moved to Murray, our children were still young, and they were not too much help for us, so we had to hire some Japanese from Salt Lake City to help us on the farm. At harvest time, the children went to Lincoln Elementary which was located on 3900 South and 500 East. Ken, Irene, and Ron went to school there.
The Kato’s left a dog behind and he stayed with us. This dog was scared of lightning and thunder, when we had thunder it went around and around the house trying to find a place to hide. This dog barked a lot so someone must have poisoned him, and he died. He was quite a big dog and was black with white spots.
We had a farm which was about 10 acres but we had lots of trouble on this farm. We had water turn (once a week water would come down the ditch for you to use, and everyone had to take turns), and every time it was our water turn, the water didn’t come so my husband with a shovel over his shoulder would go up the ditch to find out who was taking the water. Since we were the last on the line, we always had trouble and never had enough water for our vegetables. We had a stream running close to the farm land and people just came through the field to fish and grab some vegetables while they are there and when hunting season came, they would trample through our field not carin gif they stepped on our vegetables or not. My husband cleared a path so they wouldn’t ruin our vegetables, but they were rude, and didn’t stay on it. I guess we barely made a living, but stayed in Murray for about 5 years.
This farm house wasn’t very big either, but my father lived with us all that time. My father’s brother, Hiroshi Morio, came to live with us, but he was not help on the farm, and later went to Salt Lake City, and then went back to San Francisco, California where he lived before the war. We used to hear from this uncle for a while, but later we never heard from him, and then finally heard that he died when he was hit by a car. He never married and never went back to Japan since he came to America many years earlier.
Farming was very hard work, and we worked hard from morning until late at night. While living in Murray, Utah, I had another baby. I think I worked on the farm even to that day and in 1948 I had a baby boy at the Holy Cross Hospital. We named him Richard and called him Dick.
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