<Begin Segment 19>

MN: -- down to Los Angeles, why did you come to Los Angeles?

RN: Because after my father died I couldn't go back to school, so I needed a job. Somebody's got to support my mother and my daughter, I mean my sister. My older brother, he was in between jobs. He had a, he had a fruit and vegetable stand, him and a partner, but they sold out or something. So anyway, I couldn't go back to school because my father died. My sisters, I had two married sisters down here, they told me to come on down out here because they can get you a job right away in the market, the wholesale market. So I came down here, and I lived with my sister for a while and I got the job down at the wholesale market, which is a pretty hard job to get. And I worked there until the war broke out. After I got settled and my younger sister finished, finished school, then she and my mother came down here. We rented a house in Boyle Heights and we lived there until the war broke out.

MN: Which market did you work at, the Seventh or Ninth?

RN: Huh?

MN: Which market did you work at, Seventh or Ninth?

RN: Ninth Street Market, wholesale market.

MN: What did you do there?

RN: I was what they call a swamper, just a, guys that unload trucks and load trucks and wholesale work, all muscle. I got a job right away 'cause I had a few good connections, and besides that I was big like this. And it was this, this company started to wholesale potato house and those days potatoes were all hundred pound sacks, so they, that's why I got the job. I had a few good connections.

MN: There was another swamper named Shigekawa.

RN: Yeah.

MN: Tell us about him. You became good friends with him.

RN: Well, when I, way it started out I got a job there and when I was, when I started to work there, there was another young guy, young, skinny Japanese guy. He was skinny, young, and we worked pretty hard. I said this guy, little skinny guy like that and he's lifting them heavy sacks, you know? And he had one of those UCLA green caps on. And we worked together pretty good, so that happened, worked for about two years and I didn't who he was, but he was a very nice fellow. And he used to tell me he belonged to a basketball team. Well anyway, finally, after about a year and a half, I guess, or two years I found out that his father had, was one of the founders of this wholesale potato market and this skinny young kid was his only son. You heard of Dr. Shigekawa; this is the, their only son, see. Same age as me, so he quit college same time I quit school. We were workin' together, but I didn't know at that time that he was the boss's son. So anyway, we kept working for a couple years like that, and one day he was working in the office. They told him, from what I hear, another gal or something, the bookkeeper or somebody told me, said, "We told him to, don't do this heavy work. Since you're one of the stockholders there, you become a salesman and work there." So he finally put on his salesman outfit on and he signed my first paycheck. He's in the office there signing paychecks. I didn't know that. So he signed my first paycheck and then the war broke out. But all this time I didn't know who he was, and I know his, I knew his father had, they're pretty wealthy 'cause he had interests in the other businesses. So he's still living.

MN: And before you knew who he was, didn't you go driving together?

RN: What?

MN: Didn't, didn't he take you out to drive in his car and introduce you to his friends?

RN: After work sometimes he would take me to his house. They had a Mama and Papa store down Hooper Street and Central Avenue, in "kurombo town." Well, that's where they made their money. I used to go there with him. I had no car, but he had that roadster, open faced, good car, so he used to take me home with him. I'd clean up, then he'd take me for a ride. We'd go down to the beach or he'd take me to Normandie Avenue where his friends used to hang out. He was a member of the Cardinal basketball team and he would introduce me to a lot of his friends there. 'Til the war broke out and, like I say, he signed my first check when the war broke out.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.