<Begin Segment 6>

MN: What did you do after you graduated?

JI: Well, our family had a farm, and so I helped them for a while. I'm trying to remember what did I do? I did a lot of things.

MN: This was in West Covina?

JI: Yeah, West Covina. I think you know more than I do. [Laughs] There were so many things that happened.

MN: You, your brother and sister Bill, David and Dorothy, you worked the West Covina farm?

JI: Yes, I worked there. First we went to Rosemead, and we bought a house there, that's where we lived. Then we moved to Rosemead, we took the house with us to Rosemead.

MN: You physically moved the house from Rosemead to the San Gabriel Valley farm.

JI: Right. Across the street, across the street from the farm.

MN: And this was before you went to college?

JI: Yes. My brothers and sisters took over. They got old enough to do it, so I let them take care of the place and I went, took a hundred dollars out of the, out of our account and went to school.

MN: And then you came back.

JI: Then during the holidays I would come and work in the farm. So I went to Davis first, and spent two years, and I went to Berkeley, spent two years there. Got my B.S. in horticulture.

Off camera voice: Remember, you purchased the farm in West Covina, and Bill and David and Dorothy...

JI: They took care of it while I went off.

Off camera voice: No, they left you with the farm.

JI: Huh?

Off camera voice: They left you with the farm.

JI: I know it. They took over when I had left.

Off camera voice: No, this is when you started the Ruby farm. Sorry.

MN: Do you remember the Ruby Ito farm?

JI: The Ruby Ito farm? The one on San Gabriel? Yeah.

MN: Why did you call it the Ruby Ito farm?

JI: Ruby, Ruby rhubarb. We started a... well, I started it. You shelter the rhubarb, and so it became like a hothouse rhubarb, very tender and light-colored. And I would cover them up so that, to give (them shade). We sold (them on) San Gabriel Boulevard, opened the store that, well, a little shop there. And that's how we sold our rhubarb and berries, we grew a lot of berries. Strawberries and raspberries, and different kinds of things. So we did okay.

MN: So everything was red that you grew on the Ruby Ito farm, the strawberries, the raspberries, the rhubarbs, they're all red.

JI: Yeah. We had a shed just a few feet from the highway on San Gabriel Boulevard. And we had a (shop there that) became the store. And then I went to college.

MN: This is after you went. We're after the college now. You have the farm, and then the war started.

JI: And then the what?

MN: The war started.

JI: Yeah.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.