Densho Digital Archive - Tokio Hirotaka - Toshio Ito - Joe Matsuzawa Interview (denshovh-htokio

<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, now I also wanted to get a little better picture about the farming because, all the crops that you described are all, sound to me like vegetables that grow really close to the ground. That must have been very hard labor, working on those crops.

TI: Boy, it was all --

JM: We just took it for granted, that it was -- didn't think it was hard.

TI: Yeah, it was all hand and knees work, with a hoe. In those days there were very few farmers that had tractors, it was more or less a team of horses, or a single horse, to cultivate. And sometimes you hired a person that had a team of horses that would hire out, and you would hire them to plow your land to prepare it for crops. Because some families were not able to afford to keep a horse just for the crop season, and the rest of the time it's sittin' in the barn or in the pasture and you still have to feed it year-round. And money was pretty hard to come by. So, the tractors were not being used by Japanese farmers in this area until about 1939 or 1940. I remember the John Deere Company came, around 1940 I believe it was, with a screen and some of those old-time reels at the Japanese clubhouse, showing off their John Deere model L and model L-A tractors, they were about the size that were suitable for this area. And that's one of the memories that I have.

JM: In regards to that, they gave each one of us something, and we ended up with a crescent wrench. Which I think my brother has still got.

TI: I don't recall that. [Laughs]

JM: They gave out, yeah, tools, hand tools.

TI: Is that right? Oh.

AI: Well, now as I understand it, sometime around in the thirties, is that when the strawberry festival began?

TI: What year was it, when they first started that?

TH: Oh, gosh...

JM: Yeah, it was somewhere in the...

TI: Early thirties, wasn't it?

JM: Late twenties, and thirties until we left.

TI: Well they used to come around and ask for donations of crates of strawberries, and so of course when the Japanese farmers had to leave, the festival came to an end.