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SY: And how about your siblings, what has happened? Your father passed away --

HK: My father passed away when he was ninety-six years old. That's several years ago, and then my mother died earlier than that. So it's been quite a while since my parents were gone.

SY: And he was working at the nursery?

HK: The nursery.

SY: Up until?

HK: Yes.

SY: He kept going.

HK: He was ninety-six years old, my heaven, he was still working it's just incredible. These people just... work was just in their genes or their whole psyche, they're just work. It was very intense and then I have to say they did work very, very hard like a lot of the Issei men. Of course, they didn't have a choice they had to just to survive to keep the ship afloat.

SY: But by the time he died the business was --

HK: Yes, it was pretty well established.

SY: And successful.

HK: Yeah, so I'm sure he felt good about that, so that was nice to know.

SY: Right, and your oldest brother passed away?

HK: Yeah, last January, so he was ninety-one years old.

SY: Wow, and he also stayed at the nursery?

HK: Yes, of course, it was my father and brother both of them together who started the nursery, so they had a lot of commitment to keeping it going.

SY: He was also a hard worker?

HK: Absolutely, one of the hardest working people I know. He would work seven days a week and hardly ever take a vacation, I just couldn't keep up with that, it was too much.

SY: And then your sisters, what became of your sisters?

HK: Well, my oldest sister, Shizu, she married this serviceman, so she came back. As the oldest sibling in our family, she was quite enterprising with the farm and so on. She would be out there in the fields, she would be throwing around these hundred pound sacks of cucumber and going out and going to the market. And we had the strawberry stand on the street, and we would sell as much as we could, but there would always be something left to sell. She would get in the truck, take all the strawberries, go to the market and sell... convince the market people, "You need these strawberries, look how fresh they are, look at their color," and she would go out and sell. She was very entrepreneurial. So when her husband was discharged, they came back and they started a wholesale flower shipping company in San Mateo and they did very well. Again, because of sheer hard work, because it worked out eventually, the company scaled down quite a bit because the floral industry, as you probably know, they got big competition coming from South America, Latin America and began to eat away at the business. So a lot of them had to with the grower shippers, a lot of them just went out of business because again from competition from South America.

SY: But your father's was bedding plants only?

HK: Yes, wholesale growers of bedding plants.

SY: So they didn't have any interaction with your sister's business?

HK: No, not at all. See, the floral growers, they were more cut flowers. My family, my brother, my father, they had the bedding wholesale bedding plants. It's wholesale, so they went to nurseries, not retail at all, so it was a different kind of...

SY: So she eventually retired?

HK: Yes, they eventually retired, correct. Then another one of my sisters, she was a good writer, the one that went to San Jose State, and I remember in camp she was a reporter for the local camp paper, and she enjoyed writing. The next sister was Chieko, and I guess her thing was she worked as an attendance clerk or something in a middle school in San Leandro. I think she paid the highest price for camp 'cause she was at UC Berkeley in 1942 and she never was able to finish college, she was very bright, very able, student leader, et cetera, et cetera, but she never finished college. She helped the family get back on their feet when they came back to California, she just got caught up in all that responsibility and then eventually she got married and then she just couldn't finish college. She would have had a career, no doubt about it, a professional career. But she just worked as an attendance clerk at a middle school and then eventually she became just a hundred percent full housewife. And then the sister below me, the one that went to Berkeley also, she was a schoolteacher for a while. And then she married a farmer from Marysville, it was called Hatamiya. My brother-in-law is Roy Hatamiya. So they live in Marysville, Yuba City area and they're retired now. So that was her life at Marysville Yuba City.

SY: That's nice. It's interesting a lot of Japanese Americans became teachers.

HK: Yeah, we just had limited choices. So we were able to... so a lot of us went into education or women went into nursing or secretarial work, that sort of thing.

SY: That's great. And when your mother passed away, was she still helping out?

HK: She was seventy-four, unfortunately when she died she had cancer. Yeah, she was working, she worked at the nursery, yes.

SY: So I really want to back up. Their families, their respective families, did they keep in touch with them at all, your parents?

HK: Yes, they did. Not that often, but there were exchanges of letters and we went there and visited them in Kyushu in southern Japan. I went there once and met my uncles and aunts for the very first time in my life and my grandparents which I barely knew.

SY: When was that that you were able to visit them?

HK: 1959 or so. Most of them are gone now. So that was a nice visit. Then some of them also came to visit us in California so we had ongoing contact with them. I remember just shortly after the war they were really having a very difficult time just surviving. I remember we were sending food, flour and this and that, and canned goods. So we were happy to do that 'cause we were able to help them out. After maybe about a year or so we noticed that they had a change of what they were asking for, they wanted food stuff, canned goods, et cetera et cetera, then they began asking for other things. It tells you what was going on there, they said we wanted to get more makeup for the ladies, we want to get a baseball glove and a bat for the boys. So I said, "Well, this is changing isn't it?" so it was kind of reflection of they were getting in a better situation economically. That was kind of curious to see that transition of what they wanted to have.

SY: Yeah, it was Japan after the war probably.

HK: Well, my brother was there after the war, shortly after the war. He just could hardly believe what was going on. The lack of food, lack of clothing, it was really very poor situation, but remarkably they made quite a comeback in a relatively short period of time.

SY: Now your father appeared to be medically a hard worker.

HK: Absolutely. But again, that's typical Issei men. Of course, the fact that they came here alone and this adventure just told you something about them and their interests and their commitment to taking risks. So he was one of those for sure, and so he was a risk taker coming here, didn't know the language, didn't have too many skills, just manual labor but doing it. It's just a mind blowing thing when you think about it, and a very young age at that.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.