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TI: So who were, like the friends you hung out with, describe them, were they Japanese or were they white?

RH: Mostly white and at that time we had an influx of, we called them Oklahomians, they came in from Oklahoma out there because they got this pamphlet saying that's lot of work and a lot of things going on so they came out, nothing out here. So just had a lot of people.

TI: And so what did these families do in Modesto if they all came looking for jobs, work, what did they end up doing?

RH: I really don't remember but I do remember these guys, families moving out, coming back, moving out, coming back again, a certain time of the year because I guess there was work at certain places so they'd move out.

TI: So almost like migrant working?

RH: That's right.

TI: So moving to different places, okay.

RH: That's what we got in San Francisco with the Buddhaheads, the Japanese coming in, same thing.

TI: Oh, so that certain times they'd go out seasonally, do work out in the fields and then come back into the city.

RH: That's right.

TI: Back and forth. Yeah, Seattle we saw that with cannery, salmon canneries sometimes seasonally in the summer they'd be in Alaska and then come back in the wintertime.

RH: Yeah, there was a lot of peaches, apricots, grapes and stuff like that, so lot of people had to be irrigating, and then after the irrigation then they had to pick, and then after the picking they had to prune the trees and stuff like that. So there was a lot of work mostly through November but nothing until probably March. In between there the guys would move out and go to different jobs.

TI: Now for the Japanese community, were there, I guess, community-wide events like picnics, like kenjinkai picnics and things like that that you attended?

RH: Yeah, there were usually, every year there would be some kind of a picnic, and Modesto, we would attract maybe fifty families or so. So the usual things, the races and things of that sort, I remember that.

TI: Now anything unique about the food in Modesto? You mentioned peaches, I'm trying to think if there's something that was like a special dish that Modesto people had.

RH: No, I don't remember anything like that. I just ate anything, I still do that, eat anything.

TI: But it was mostly Japanese food?

RH: Well, it's like potluck, everybody brings something and they would eat and then they'd go around to different families and say hello and eat some food there and so forth.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.