<Begin Segment 5>

MN: Let me go back to your early childhood, going back to where you were born, and then you were there for about three or five years and then you moved to Inglewood?

TY: Inglewood.

MN: Now why did your family have to move from the Moneta area into Inglewood?

TY: Well, I don't really know the cause of it, but I asked him, I asked my dad, he said, "Well, we have to have new ground to grow good strawberries." And that's the reason why he moved over there, I guess, is my guess. So that's what he said, to have new ground to grow good strawberries, because strawberries, you can only grow strawberries so long in one same soil. So then, say like you eat a, say like a, say like you grow a certain kind of food in a certain spot, it loses all its nutrients of that certain food, plant, rather, so that's one of the reasons. So now they don't do that. They fumigate it. That's modern technique, to fumigate it to kill all the worms and bugs, sterilize the ground. So then at that time they didn't have such a thing. That's the reason. It was all nature, natural.

MN: And then your family was in Inglewood for about four or five years and then you moved to the Johnson ranch?

TY: Moved to Hawthorne, Johnson ranch.

MN: Can you tell us a little bit about the Johnson ranch in Hawthorne? How big was it?

TY: It was huge. It was about, one section, El Segundo Boulevard to Rosecrans and Imperial Highway, Aviation Boulevard, so it must've been about one section, one section of land. That's six hundred and forty acres.

MN: Now, the Kurata ranch, was that part of the Johnson ranch?

TY: No. Kurata ranch was another ranch that Mr. Kurata leased from somebody. I don't know who the owner was, but because of the Exclusion Act the Japanese couldn't lease land, so then Mr. Kurata leased the one section, or half a section of land called the Kurata ranch because Mr. Kurata signed the lease on it, so that's why it's called the Kurata ranch. And then the Kurata ranch was from Perry Avenue to, Perry Avenue and Rosecrans and to Redondo Beach Boulevard, I guess. And so Leuzinger High School was between Johnson ranch and Kurata ranch, which is about, maybe about five miles apart, I would say. That's why we know the Kurata ranch people and Johnson ranch people, Kurata ranch people know Johnson ranch people, and all that, because there's Hawthorne Grammar School, Lawndale Grammar School, and Inglewood Grammar School, and Wiseburn Grammar School, and... yeah, so they all went to Leuzinger High School and that's how we know all the people.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.