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MA: I wanted to talk a little bit about your father's work that he went into after the war. You said he went into gardening and the nursery business. Can you talk a little bit about that and how he built that, and your role? I'm sure your siblings worked.

IK: Right. Well, you know, my father had a high school education in Japan, which is very high for his time. He was born in 1897, and he was very highly educated, much more educated than my mother. Much more interested, because he read the Hearst papers and the LA Times. And yet, because he didn't have any schooling here, plus he couldn't be a citizen until '52, was it, I think. And I never heard him expressing a desire to get his citizenship either. I think he knew that this was his home forever because we're here, but I never heard him say, "I think I'd like to go to school and get my citizenship." And because of that, what could he do? He knew the land, and so that's why he did gardening, and then went into the nursery business.

MA: And that started after the war when he moved to Torrance?

IK: Uh-huh. Well, no, actually, he was, in terms of owning the land, it was postwar. Before (that), like the property by LAX was leased. And then the other jobs he had were following the crops in the Imperial Valley primarily, going to Coachella Valley, working in a fruit stand, in a coffee shop. So it wasn't really his business until after the war, when it was possible.

MA: And what did you, what types of things would you do helping out with his business?

IK: Whatever they said. The one that I hated the most was to wash the pots. Because the pots that had moss growing on it, I would have to sit there, and it was such a tiring job, especially during the summer. The sun's beating on me, I hated that job. And this is when I'm still, like, first, second grade. So until I was, I guess, junior high age, I would do that. And I would help plant. I know that every summer, my brother and I would be awakened when it was still dark. And we'd go into the field, and there'd be this round, kind of like a turntable, and we'd put the gallon cans with the dirt on the turntable, and it would go to my father and he'd plant, my mother doing the same thing. And so we would plant while it was still cool, without any heat yet. So that I remember. About the time that, I guess... my parents planted pansies first, I should put that, and the chrysanthemums came later. It was primarily wholesale at first. And I have two stories coming up. But I remember that I had to stand on the street in front of the house on Crenshaw and sell baskets of pansies. And one day, this old, gray-haired hakujin man came to buy a basket of pansies. And I don't know how I was giving change, frankly, but he says, "Wait a minute, you're not doing it right." So he stood there, and he showed me how to count back. He would show me how to count back the change, he said, "Okay, now you do it again." And so I did it over and over and over for him, and so he taught me how to count change. And then it was, I guess, end of junior high -- although Torrance didn't have junior high -- so I'm putting it in age context. Torrance was K to 8, 9 to 12. So somewhere around when I would have been an eighth grader, eighth and ninth, that's when I started selling. And I would have to learn what everything was.

And so I was working in the nursery that way until I graduated from high school and I went to USC and my parents had me dorm. And I know that it was financially very difficult. I really don't know how they... 'cause they didn't take out any loans. I don't know if my father even took a tanomoshii, you know, from his kenjinkai group. Of course, 'cause I'm not privy to the conversation, right? You don't see, so it doesn't exist. But anyway, my mother insisted that I dorm at SC, which was really great for me. Because she said if I stayed home and they got busy outside, they would call me, and they wanted me to study. They didn't want my studies interrupted. And it was like, oh my god. My first day on campus in the dorm, I got to get up late. [Laughs] Because from the time I was little to high school, it was either getting up early for school or getting up early to go outside, even earlier, 'cause it was still dark. And I thought it was so wonderful when I could sleep in after seven o'clock or whatever, you know. So even to this day, I'm a night owl. I can be up 'til two, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning sometimes. Especially my husband's gone, too, because I never was up that late when he was around, but I am now. But I get up around nine-thirty. That's why when you asked me what time, I said, "Well, I'd rather come later." [Laughs]

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.