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TI: And, and during this time when he was in San Francisco pretty much on his own, I'm trying to place the time, if it was about the Depression years, so we're kind of in the early '30s?

NA: Early, yeah. It'd be, I guess, after he graduated high school. He really ended up, said by that time his brother above him married a Morimoto. This Morimoto Tsuji and Moriguchi would become very interrelated, extended family, but so Auntie Shii-chan's American born. She's a Nisei, and so Tatsumi married Auntie Shii-chan and the father felt by marrying, he took away the most productive person for the Morimoto farm, so he said, "Hachio, you go over there and you work for Morimotos." And my dad just got out of high school, graduated, so he went over and he really worked for them and the big joke later on came out at a family reunion when one of the younger sisters said, "Hachiyo-san, did we ever pay you?" And he says, "Not a dime." And so in whatever they, obligation kind of thing within the family and all, because the Morimotos, though there was an older son who then passed on early, had, like five daughters and then had three younger sons who were, like, six, five, six, seven, so they weren't of, couldn't do the help, but the girls, and especially Auntie Shi-chan, she was always there. We used to always say, "Oh yeah, she could throw a hundred pound rice sack on her back and walk up the stairs." She was a really genki, healthy woman.

TI: And so your father was sent to replace her because she could do so much work?

NA: Basically. And so the stories coming out of there is, they says, oh, they all remember him driving the tractor and singing on the top of his lungs, driving the tractor as they did cultivation and all that, but during that time he also was trying to figure out what the heck is he gonna do. And part of it, of course, getting that farming experience there and all, he decided, okay, this isn't a bad work, but he really doesn't like irrigation and so, and he started to figure this out that maybe natural irrigation is possible and he thought about green table peas, the English peas, and so he started to plot it. And it goes that -- he also had a motorcycle, so he was a pretty cool guy, right -- and the story goes is that when it seems to be, starting to be foggy he would just kind of get on his motorcycle, go up the California coastline, going up north to find the foggiest place possible, because he figured that would be, and in spring and summertime because that would be natural irrigation.

TI: I see, so just the moisture in the air, the fog, would, would water the plants.

NA: Exactly. So that's, and then, of course, he had this other thing. He really didn't want to work twenty, twelve months of the year doing truck farming as most of the farmers were doing. He just wanted one crop and then to go fishing the rest of the time, winter time. And so that was his plan and he did find such a place, and that was up the coast of California to Mendocino County where there was no Japanese and it was mainly dairy farming and maybe some grazing cattle, but there was no (farms), if there were any kind of farming it was for feed, so, and lumbering, redwood lumbering, so he kind of went up there and it's a new adventure, right? And, but he was successful in getting in with the community there, and he said he really, at the beginning, felt little bit guilty because he knew there was that alien land law and he wasn't a citizen, but he, he just kind of had to rely that these people were trusting, friendly people and didn't have their hearts or minds into that kind of arena. And one way, we asked him, "Well, how'd you get into this?" And the nice thing is we were able to go in, go up to the, that area while he was (alive), celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday and ninetieth birthday up there and was able to meet one of the early people that he befriended and who was much younger than he, but he broke into the baseball team of that area and he being very athletic was able to gain respect from the kids. 'Cause he figured, well, if the kids kind of like you and you can gain their kind of friendship and be genuine about it, he says, then he's pretty sure the other people will like him, too. So he eventually is able to get one bottom, he calls it the bottom land and so it's kind of a little swampy and not worked over land right near the Point Arena lighthouse, and he tills and gets the first crop up and it's very successful. It all worked. His planning of putting peas in there, a foggy place, came out and the peas were good. And so -- do I, you want me to jump ahead because this connects up with interesting story?

TI: Sure, go ahead. This is, this is good.

NA: So he did very well, by the way. It was, sometimes you go like, God, how did he do that with only one crop? I asked him, as I got to be a teenager one of my job was get on the phone and call all the markets, like down to Los Angeles, Eagle Market, wherever the peas got sent, and Oakland and San Francisco, and I'd call 'em, say, "Okay." They'd say, "Okay, the peas went for three cents, your dad came in at thirteen." "Alright." Write it down. Another guy would say, "Okay, the peas came in, like, two cents, but your father got twelve." "Alright." This is by the pound. So I'm just writing this down and all, but later on (while doing his) oral history, I said, "Okay, Dad, I want to know, because in college I realized the average California farmer was making about thirty thousand a year, but you were, like, tripling that. And on one crop only, so I don't understand this." He says, "Well, what's the label? Fred Moriguchi sweet quality peas. That's why." [Laughs] "That doesn't explain anything, Dad." He says, "It does. I guarantee sweet and quality." I said, "What do you mean? You're putting the price on yourself?" He says, "Yeah. I tell 'em if you can't give me twelve cents, 'cause I know its value is twelve cents, you dump the whole load." And I'm goin' like, oh my God, but that's how, he said, "That's how much I put my faith in what I'm producing."

TI: So he got a really premium for his, his peas.

NA: And so his peas would have been sold at, like, equivalent to what Gleason's or, you know, the high end shops, and that's the guarantee that he puts on. And so that's when you, then you think back, okay, then his pickers are really trained to do that quality work. That's why he keeps the team and, and this whole interrelationship, then you begin to see how his mind worked. I mean, if you want the best you got to treat equally and well and then you get the best and all that, but one of the things that all of us kids, all five of us kids really, I think one of the things is my dad always planned ahead. Always plan ahead, don't, if you're going, if you got a name you always plan ahead. You could deviate as you go, but plan ahead. So there was that kind of lessons, right, but this, this whole thing with the peas, part of it is really coming back to us as we've become adults.

TI: That's, that's an amazing story. I mean, he's an incredibly savvy businessperson.

NA: Surprising. But, but yes, but no. [Laughs]

TI: Well, you know, yeah, I mean just in terms of how he thought things through. It's very, it can be a case study for a Harvard Business Review. Really, in terms of how to succeed and, and in terms of focusing on not only quality products but how you get there and how you market yourself. It's really, really great story.

NA: Yeah, and then on top of that, he did not want to use chemical sprays, so every year we'd go up there to Shasta, going up towards Placer County to ladybug country and we'd be coming, driving back down to Mendocino coast with ladybugs kind of flying, escaping. But we'd come down with the load of ladybugs because aphids are primo, right, and so the ladybugs would be released and annually have to drive up there and get more ladybugs.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.