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TI: So what are some, growing up, who are your playmates? You didn't have any brothers or sisters, so who did you play with?
JH: Neighbor kids. There wasn't, that was no problem. Our biggest hobby was getting scrap wood -- there's always hammers and nails around the house -- and we used to like to make trucks, and instead of wheels we put sleds underneath. Then we'd load boxes and stuff, unload, play like a produce trucker, that kind of stuff. We don't go into cop and robber until I was... well, that's going ahead. From then on, when the well went dry, my father got a job in Cupertino, as I said, and it was a prune and apricot orchard. And he stayed there maybe a year and a half, maybe two. Anyway, during the apricot season the boss would recruit pickers, Niseis from San Francisco, San Jose, and one of the workers were, from San Jose, was Dr. Ishikawa, the owner of the, this present land, and the other one was one of the Dobashi brothers, the Dobashi Market. And he says, "Yeah, I remember you, little kid running around." [Laughs] But that's... then a neighbor, Japanese neighbor, came to my father's boss and said, "You know, I could run the orchard for you, and if you let me plant strawberries on the vacant land my family can sharecrop the strawberries." Well, the hakujin boss figures that's additional income, so he told my father to, goodbye. Got --
TI: Someone else essentially took his job.
JH: Well, he got bumped, in other words.
TI: I see.
JH: So he came back to Yasunaga, and Yasunaga says yeah, there's a hakujin boss looking for horse drivers, and the wife can do fruit work. So he came to, where, Trimble and First Street. There was a Wade family there. But I, being a little bit bigger than the foreman's son, I used to pick on him, and the foreman says to my dad, "Your son is ijimeru my son, and I don't want you."
TI: [Laughs] So you, you made it hard for your father so that he lost his job.
JH: Well, he didn't hit me, though. He says he can't help out. And then just coincidentally, there was a big grocery man in Japantown, Morimoto, he bought acreage right next to this Wade ranch and he wanted sharecroppers in blackberries. My father took that on. He made money, but got to go to Chinatown. [Laughs]
TI: For gambling?
JH: Gamble, yeah. But he was a good, good farmer, had good berries. And during the maritime strike the fruit stands along El Camino would come and buy berries, and those fruit stand owners said, "You know what? Put a little bit more, just a little bit more." My father put a little bit more and, "Gee, lots of berries in the basket." Went like hotcakes. Then my neighbor, adjacent, same landlord but adjacent farmer, he says, "How come you don't buy my berries?" "Well, I came here first, so I buy from him." But he says, "If you don't buy my berries, don't come." So he lost an outlet there. And during this maritime strike, produce couldn't go into either San Francisco or Oakland because the so-called longshoremen would blockade the road and soon as the trucks come they'd cut the rope and dump all the produce. So the berries kept ripening, ripening, and pretty soon you know, when the strike was over, then no more berries. So he cranks up the Model T and goes to this Gallagher Fruit Company that he was working when he was a bachelor, and the boss was still there, says, "Yeah, I'll hire you." So my mother and dad went there and worked through the winter to tide them over. In the meantime, I don't know why, but my dad made me go to Japanese school, and that's across the creek from where we used to live.
TI: And do you remember how old you were when you started Japanese school?
JH: Ten.
<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.