<Begin Segment 33>

MN: What was it like coming back? Was it just as hard to move back to California?

TY: No, it didn't seem to be. No, we got whatever we wanted. We got our gasoline at our demand, we got our motel at our demand, and stopped in Las Vegas for a couple of minutes and came back home. And we had a friend that took over my dad's ranch when we left, he gave us a place to stay, sort of a chicken coop type of house, cleaned it up, stayed there for about maybe two, three months, until we found some, another Chinese that was looking for labor or partnership or whatever. And then we got into partnership with this other Chinese guy, then he built us a new home, new house.

MN: This is in La Puente.

TY: Yeah, La Puente.

MN: So what happened when you tried to hook up the water there?

TY: Well, we didn't have a problem then because we was on the Chinese farm, see, and then we decided we don't want to go sharecropping with a Chinese, so then we decided we want to rent a ranch, ten acre, fifteen or twenty acre. So we rented a ten acre, I thought it was, yeah, ten acres with a house on it. Then we needed some water to bring up the seeds and water the plants. We went to the water department and, hey, we'd like to apply for water for the certain ranch over there, and we leased it so we want some water. "We're not gonna give no water to Japs. If you don't get out of my office I'll shoot you with a shotgun." This old lady, old lady in the office say they're gonna shoot us with a shotgun. Wow, better get out of there. [Laughs] So then we talked to the landlord, said, hey, that office woman, what was her name, gonna shoot us, not gonna give us water, so maybe you can get the water for us. "Oh yeah, I'll go get the water from her and I'll tell her off, kick her out of the office." So he got water for us, and that's how we got started, Martha.

MN: What did you plant?

TY: Plant lettuce, lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, something like that, spinach.

MN: Why didn't you stay in Colorado and just farm there?

TY: I didn't see any hope in Colorado. There was no hope because you get one crop a year, and that don't bring you no money. You can eat up the one crop in one, that winter. See, then I really didn't see a future in farming in Colorado. That's why I came back, to farm at home. On the West Coast I can grow three crops a year, and if you failed in one crop a third of the year then maybe second part of the year maybe come back, maybe third, no, second part or the third part in one year's time. But Colorado you can't. If you have a bad year, well then that's bad for that year. That's why I want to come back to my West Coast, Pacific Coast, Pacific shoreline, Pacific Ocean.

MN: And you, and you can only plant one crop in Colorado because the growing season is so short?

TY: Short.

MN: And the ground freezes over?

TY: Yeah, one crop. Just one.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.