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MN: Tell me about your other friend, Taniguchi.

RN: I had, I made friends with a couple of people that used to live here, and I got to know 'em real good. They used to take me around, everywhere. I had no car in those days, and so they used to pick me up and we used to go here and there. We used to go, we used to go everywhere. They used to take me to the beach, racetracks sometimes, everywhere.

MN: Didn't you and Taniguchi go down to Oceanside?

RN: Did I go down to Oceanside? Yeah, I went. You see, my Saturdays and Sundays are open, and my mother was already settled in her house and I had nothing to do, and I used to like to bum around, see different places. And sometimes I know all the, I don't know how it got about to it, but I got to know some of the truck drivers down, down at the wholesale market, and I used to say, hey, how about taking, how about me taggin' along? 'Cause on the, it used to be on a schedule, about like a Saturday or a Friday, something, they had to go out to these different farms all over to pick up produce and bring it to the market, and he'd say, yeah, come on with me, and I would ride with him. And we'd go all over, down toward Oceanside and San Onofre. That was the closest one. We used to go up in the hills there where they used to raise tomatoes and celery, those Japanese farmers, and naturally I had to help him load the truck. So I used to go with him, help load the truck, we'd come back downtown and we'd stop at, always we would stop, going and coming, at Knott's Berry Farm. At that time it was, they didn't have, Knott's Berry Farm didn't have the, what they have now. All they had was a, was a family restaurant, chicken dinners. We'd stop there and have a chicken dinner, coming back we would have a chicken dinner, and then we'd drop the stuff off at the market. And he was one of 'em. I had a couple other friends I would hang, go with, and I would ride with them.

MN: Did you get a ride to Terminal Island?

RN: I used to go there a number of times. That's another story all by itself. Yeah, I always wanted to become a tuna fisherman because when I was in Seattle working in the salmon canneries, I had a friend and he was from Terminal Island, and he was going to school at the Washington State University when I was there for a short time. He came there and I got to know him, and he's, he lived at the boarding house and I was batching, or living out on a farmhouse, below the school there's little small farms. I stayed with a hakujin family, room and board. And he used to tell me about Terminal Island and he'd begin to tell me how, I used to tell him, yeah, I'd like to go down to California and work in those tuna boats 'cause my, couple of my friends had connections, and they work in the tuna boats and they come back with a pile of money. He said, no, he says, "You don't want to work in the tuna boats, Roy." Says, "That's not for you." He says it's rough. You make big money sometime if you're lucky, but he says Japanese down there that work on the tuna boats, they're very clannish, from Japan. They're, and they, like he used to tell me, they talk about it and you're a beginner and they're gonna cut you up and down 'cause you don't know how to be a fisherman, you're not a member of the clan. You know, Japanese are very close, the Japanese fishermen especially. They're very, very close, and you'll be the outsider and they're gonna cut you up and down. "Yeah, but," I say, "you make good money." He said, "Yeah, you make good money sometimes." Well anyway, he was tellin' me all about it, but I was determined, so I said I'm gonna get a boat down there. So I used to go down to Terminal Island after work, after the wholesale market closed a lot of time -- it closed at eleven o'clock -- I'd go home, I'd go with my friends, they used to live right close by. I used to clean up and I used to take a streetcar down to the red car. Remember the red cars? They'd go directly to San Pedro. I'd go to San Pedro, take that little ferry across the thing and go to Terminal Island, and I used to hang around the pool hall there, walk along the pier there, getting acquainted with those guys there, trying to, trying to get on the fishing boats, see. But then they, then I got to know some of the guys, but I got to know some guys and it's too hard, he says. You got to have pull, all your Japanese Issei connections. Yeah, I used to hang around there. Then I used to come home and come home about six o'clock, go to bed for two hours. [Laughs]

MN: And when did your day start at the wholesale market?

RN: What?

MN: What time did you have to be at the wholesale market?

RN: At that time the market, summertime it was open three o'clock, three o'clock in the morning. They'd blow the whistle then you, everybody opened the doors. Then I'd work until eleven o'clock.

MN: Well, you never made on a fishing boat, but you went up to Stockton.

RN: Huh?

MN: But you went up to Stockton and Salinas quite a lot.

RN: Well, I went up to Stockton, I used to catch a ride with a lot of these truck drivers. Down at the market when I was working at the wholesale market I used to, somehow I used to talk to some of them drivers and they, they're pretty sociable guys and, "Yeah, come along with me," he says. "Come with me." And I'd just ride with 'em 'cause they, they liked to have company, see, but sometimes I'd fall asleep. They'd wake me up, say, "Hey, don't go to sleep," he says. Says, "You got to, if you fall asleep I get sleepy," so the drivers used to tell me don't fall asleep. [Laughs] That's all okay. Okay, I says. So I kept awake. But they were nice guys.

MN: So you didn't have a car, but you got around California quite a lot.

RN: Well, I took the streetcar those days. It wasn't difficult because I didn't go nowhere. You know, those days it was called the P-car that went down, goes up First Street all the way up to Brooklyn Avenue, back into town. Pico, down to Pico was the end of the line. So anyway, that P-car used to come right down to Little Tokyo all the time, take me to Boyle Heights where I lived, used to live.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.