<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So we kind of got you through high school. What did you do after you graduate from high school?

JH: What year?

TI: Yeah, what year did you graduate?

JH: 1936.

TI: Okay, so 1936, what did you do next then, after you graduate from high school?

JH: Okay, seventeen we were already farming, we were farming with berries. Well, everybody was farming berries, so there was a glut on the market, so my father switched to celery. And he was a good farmer. From, yeah, '38, '39, '40, '41, boy, we were rolling in money because he talked me into going to the produce terminal and selling direct. So the first year we made, yeah, we made ten thousand dollars, I think. Then from then on, it just grew because we increased the acreage and grew and grew. And my clients liked my produce, so no question. "How many you want today?" "Oh, I'll take twenty-five." Write out the tag and deliver it to 'em, this kind of stuff. It was great.

TI: So explain the produce terminal. What, how was that set up and what was your typical day there?

JH: Right over there. Trying to figure... Taylor, Taylor and the railroad track. What is there now? Gee, I haven't been that way -- anyway, there were commission houses, Banana King, Potato King and so forth, and so some of 'em would go out in the country and buy produce from Japanese and truck it in and sell next morning. Well, in the back there was space available, and you'd go beyond the commission houses and you parked your truck and they'd come, well, mostly we did our selling in the coffee house because once you're known there's no problem. We made money, got a new car. [Laughs]

TI: So John, who would you sell to? Who would your customers be?

JH: Italians.

TI: And these are Italian grocery store owners?

JH: Distributors.

TI: Okay.

JH: See, in those days they didn't have chains. Each grocer had his own so that they'd go over there and sell direct to the, in other words, the distributor buys from me, takes his cut, and sells it to the store. Now, here's a typical example: one of my clients was Franco Foods -- now it's, well, P.W. went, not bankrupt, but they're closed now. That was one big outfit. And the rest of 'em were Italians, Giannini Produce, Phil Lababera, Frank Aiassa, a whole bunch.

TI: So you said that most of the, a lot of the transactions happened in the coffee shop, so you would go to the coffee shop and these people would come and that's where you would, they would take orders in the coffee shop?

JH: Yeah. See, in front of the produce market was this Bini's. I don't know if you heard of it or not.

TI: No, I haven't. But go ahead, explain it.

JH: And anyway, it's half restaurant and half bar, and the biggest seller was coffee royal. Instead of ordering coffee, they'd give you a cup of coffee and they'd put a shot of something. [Laughs] That's the way it was.

TI: And so in the morning, would you just go to the coffee shop and sit there and then people would come?

JH: No, no, no. You walk up to each client.

TI: So you're, you're...

JH: They're all sitting on their stools.

TI: And so you would go and say, "I have celery to sell," and --

JH: No, no, no. Once you're known, then you say, "How many you want today? How many you want tomorrow?"

TI: I see. So they would know you, they would know that you had celery, they'd know the quality of your food.

JH: That's right.

TI: And you would just ask --

JH: Maybe initially it was hard because they didn't know what kind of stuff I had, but once they got the hang of it -- and for some peculiar reason they want great big celery. Why, I don't know.

TI: 'Cause that was tougher, right? Or not as...

JH: Well, first you plant it, then you wrap it with newspaper to bleach it. And my dad was a good farmer. Man, great big celery like this. And what, I don't know what the grocers did with 'em because we'd sell it by the crate, the guy buys it by the crate. What he does after that, I don't know. But the less you got in the crate, the same price, be it sixteen in a crate or twenty-four in a crate or twelve in a crate, three seventy-five is three seventy-five.

TI: Well, and how would you negotiate the price? How would they know how much to sell for?

JH: The pipeline right away, the commission houses are charging so much and word gets around, and they come and say, how much am I gonna charge. Say, "How much you gonna pay?" So I'm like no, no, no, go back and forth. Once it's set then it's, that's it.

TI: So once you set it with one buyer, then that's the price for the whole...

JH: That's right. I said, "He's gonna pay me so much. If you don't pay I go sell to some --" "Oh no, no, no." [Laughs] They're educated immigrants, very fluent in English, very fluent in their native tongue, and very fluent in the, merchandise savvy, the psychology so-called.

TI: And so I'm guessing that you would sell a little bit lower than the commission houses? So you would know what they were selling and you would sell less?

JH: The pipeline is a great thing. Even the produce merchants, they come in and have coffee too, and some of them, the so-called distributors would boycott Japanese. They just don't trust us. They don't even talk to us. But they do talk to each other. "Hey, how much is, commission house charge so much." "Yeah, I'm gonna talk to my -- hey, that..." Maybe I'm cheaper. I may be cheaper, I may be not, but I have quality where they don't.

TI: I see.

JH: Because they go hop, skip and a jump from one farmer to the next to see what, they don't know how big or what quality is. I had it made, man. Jeez.

TI: That was, that's good. So your dad said that was better for you to sell because he would get higher prices.

JH: And you bypass the fifteen percent.

TI: Right. Okay. So that was kind of your job, then, to go --

JH: Well, I was a happy bachelor. I'd like to go skating party or watch basketball games, but by the same token, I have to harvest the celery, wash it, put it on the truck, get up at two in the morning to get first in line. So that was a rough job. But one day my father, I think he was still sharecropping berries, yeah, he came home one day and he said, "You know what? I met this Mr. Omori that I came from Japan with to Honolulu." "Oh?" So they start visiting, 'til three or four years. And then 1940 I think it was, I had my new car and I see this new car in the yard -- you know, joyriding, coming in -- and, "Oh, Mr. Omori's here." I go in the house and I said, "Omori-san, konnichi wa," and I see this girl. "Hi," and I ducked into my bedroom. And my dad knocks on the bedroom, "Son, I want you to come out here and I want you to meet this girl." He introduced me to this girl. So we start shooting the breeze, I guess for two or three hours, and my mother served supper so we had supper, talked some more, and then they went home. Next morning my dad says, "Would you consider a serious relationship with that pretty girl?" "Holy smokes. I just got to --" Well, says, "Alright, I'll give you the..." That's how it started. We finally got married in camp.

TI: That's interesting. She was Nisei also?

JH: Nisei.

TI: But it's like an arranged marriage kind of.

JH: No.

TI: Well, kind of. I mean, they were, where they were kind of setting you up.

JH: Well, the Omori family took a chance to see if her, their daughter would be suitable for me. They started it, not me. Well, that's beside the point.

TI: That's interesting, okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.