<Begin Segment 67>

JA: Again, then you sold your family farm along with the six other neighbors.

MH: Yes, all the neighbors. Seven families sold together.

JA: And roughly around that same period of time, the individual farm, Nikkei farms, were also being sold, correct?

MH: They were starting to move a little bit, uh-huh.

JA: What were some of the other occupations that the Nikkei moved into?

MH: Moved into? Most of them went to Boeing... see, there were jobs at Boeing. Some went to Boeing and like the Mizokawas bought in, bought their Bellevue nursery. And Muromotos and Mizokawas bought the nursery over there. And one of the boys bought a hotel in Seattle, and they still have a hotel there, is what they are doing. And the other boy went to Bellevue post office, worked as a mailman, or delivery man I guess you call it, and he got into that. And the other one went into post office too, I noticed Ted did. And that's about -- there weren't too many of us left in Bellevue, is what it was, but they did -- see, they did like those things, and then they went to Seattle and got jobs in Seattle, too, is what they did.

JA: In the early '50s was civil service, many went to work for the post office.

MH: That's right. That's what they did, about three of them.

JA: Would you say... what was the employment possibilities, at that time, for Nikkei?

MH: At that time it was fine. They were accepting you anyplace, anywhere as long as there was a job there. And they gave them opportunity to take a test, and they did fine, so they were accepted into those positions as a mailman.

JA: Again, civil service.

MH: Civil service mail jobs.

JA: Is a kind of early stage of affirmative action, right, because it became color-blind.

MH: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 67> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.