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SN: I'd like to kind of go into that process a little bit more, because a hundred strawberry pickers to me sounds like an awful lot. Now, you talked about your farm being 10 acres initially. Did this farm grow over the years?

SH: Well, if you have 5 acres of strawberries, you need a hundred or more pickers during the peak season. And we hired schoolkids around this community. It needed a lot of pickers. The rest of the time we did it ourselves... other crops, handled other crops ourselves.

SN: And, how much were strawberry pickers paid at that time?

SH: You know, I forgot, but it was very small amount. We were only getting... when we picked and sent it to the canneries, we were getting 5... 4, 5, 6 cents a pound. I don't know. It came out probably a cent a pound for picking. I can't remember how much it was for picking.

SN: Can you describe a little bit about how the produce that came from your farm made it to market? I know you described that at thirteen years of age taking the produce to the market on your own. But, can you describe that process from beginning to end, let's say from the time that the vegetables are picked, how did it get to market, both strawberries or vegetables?

SH: My dad was one of the first farmers in Bellevue. In fact, he was the first one to buy a truck to haul it ourselves. Other farmers, there was a, an express service, came around every evening around six or after, and picked up whatever was the farmer wanted to, had harvested that day. He'd write out a ticket, so many crates of strawberries to certain produce house by name. And these produce house, by the way, were what they called commission merchants. They, they, we consigned it to 'em. We were at their mercy. We consigned it to 'em. They never bought it directly, like they do now. So, they got what they could and then they took a charge of 15 percent. So it was 85 percent back to the farmer from the selling price, wholesale selling price. But, lot of times you didn't get that. And, sometimes the farmers that never went with, or never delivered themselves, were told that, "Well, we had to throw a third of 'em away, we couldn't sell strawberries that day that we received them. They were overripe, or they weren't very good." So the next day... strawberries have to be used that day you pick 'em, you all know that. If it stayed overnight, it was no good anyway. So they say, "We dumped 'em all." So we didn't get paid anything, but we still had to pay the 10 cents a crate or so, whatever it was for the freight, and we never got paid. I think the farmers at that time were at the mercy of the commission merchants. I know that some of them never got what they were supposed to get. But I hauled my own. And I didn't get paid at the time of delivery, we still had to wait once a week to get paid. Most of the farmers, Bellevue and through the valley, White River valley farmers, Vashon Island... Vashon, straying from the subject, but, Vashon and Bainbridge Island, there were farmers. And they raised mostly strawberries and cane berries. They didn't raise lettuce and celery and that kind of stuff, because of the transportation difficulty.

AI: Now, cane berries, can you give some examples?

SH: When I say cane berries, it's raspberries, loganberries, blackberries, that grow on canes, differential. It doesn't mean one variety, but when you say cane berries, it's, they're trained, they don't let 'em grow wild on the ground, they had to be trained to grow up.

SN: And then you just... before, you were saying how the Issei farmers were at the mercy of these people who bought the produce. To the best of your knowledge, did they ever try to do anything about that? To me it would have been very difficult, but, sometimes you hear stories.

SH: Yes. After a few years, they started growing stuff that they couldn't sell enough, I mean, there were too many to be sold. There wasn't a market for all that they were... the farmers in Bellevue, without counting the other area farmers. So, a few of the farmers got together and formed a vegetable growers' association. And they built a packing shed, hired a plant manager, and whenever produce, like cauliflower was in season, peas in season, they shipped it back east. And that helped relieve the overproduction, overproduction by, I mean, selling it locally. So, in lot of the produce, like I mentioned, were sold back east, Chicago and further east.

SN: So the Issei farmers formed this, like you said, this co-op...

SH: Co-op, uh-huh...

SN: ...Japanese-run shed. Is this the shed you were referring to earlier that was actually run by a Caucasian manager? This is the shed?

SH: The plant manager, yes.

SN: Okay. So was this in response to their experiences working with the buyers for this produce initially before they formed this?

SH: Uh-huh.

SN: Now, when you were taking your berries -- because your situation was different, you said your dad had a truck and you were able to actually bring the berries into town. Can you just describe what your experience was, in terms of what you did with the produce after you trucked the strawberries into town?

SH: I still consigned, I couldn't get them to, to say, give you a receipt saying so many crates of berries at and quote a price on there, a guaranteed price. Couldn't get 'em to do that. It was just, everybody consigned it. And whenever the product, the produce was scarce, well you get a better price for it than if there was a glut on the market, then you didn't get very much. And I know there's a lot of times that they, I never got paid at all for a load of produce. They'd say that they couldn't sell it. It got too old and they had to throw it away. But... that was just the system, it just never seemed to change.

SN: And beside, you make references to strawberries. Did you grow anything else? Did your family grow anything else besides berries?

SH: Besides strawberries? Did I grow? Yes, I was growing tomatoes, peas, cauliflower, half of my farm was in crops like that, and the other half was strawberries. But I cut down the strawberry acreage, after my dad died, I cut my strawberry acreage down. One thing about strawberries, you have to plant 'em this spring, and you have no harvesting of strawberries until the following spring. So, the first year it took two years for one year's production. Strawberry plantings were good for two, three, four years, that was about the limit. After four years -- which is three pickings -- you plowed 'em up and replanted. The berry, the fruit got smaller and smaller every year. The plants got older and bigger, but the fruit got smaller. Strawberries were the nicest and the biggest, prettiest the first year you picked them after planting. I have years that I kept a portion of a field that was good yet, and picked them for four years, which was a five-year-old plant. But most farmers picked it three years, then plowed them over and replanted again.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.