<Begin Segment 8>

TI: I want to talk about other activities. Now, at this time were you involved with other community organizations, like church or anything else?

JH: I was invited to the Nitto Athletic Club. Well, you didn't have to know about it, but anyway, there was the Buddhist church athletic club and the Nittos, we were the no-goods. We're not, no religiously, no ties. [Laughs] Bunch of farmers. But they invited me because I guess I'd make a good scorekeeper and watch the stopwatch and all that, so I was a Nitto. Then, naturally, go to skating parties, and that's about it.

TI: How about the JACL? Were you involved in the JACL before the war?

JH: The bylaws at that time, soon as you hit your twenty-first birthday, then they, you qualify for a membership. So this Shigio Masunaga says, "John, you're twenty-one. Will you join the JACL?" (Narr. note: His parents named him Shigeo but the recorder of the birth certificate wrote "Shigio.") I says alright. I guess I was a dues paying member because all the other guys were already in their late twenties, early thirties. What am I doing, young buck, nineteen, I mean twenty-one? Anyway, getting back to this selling strawberries, I mean celery, for some reason I ran out of crate covers. In the harvesting of celery you put it in the crate, then you cover it. So I get in the car and turn on the radio, and Pearl Harbor's been bombed. Whoops. So I go to this market, San Jose market box, distributor of... shook. "You're going to market tomorrow?" I says, "Yeah, why?" "Gee, Pearl Harbor." I say, "Well, give me the crate covers. I'm gonna go anyhow." So I went home to my ranch and I told my dad. He said the same thing. "You're going to market tomorrow?" I says, "Yeah. What's wrong with that?" Didn't occur to me the serious or the gravity of the situation. Well anyway, we harvested the whole truckload, and next morning I get up and crank up the truck and go to market. "Oh, John. Boy, good to see you."

TI: I'm sorry, so who said that to you? Was it an Italian or Japanese or...

JH: There was no, no ethnicity involved, just a matter of supply and demand.

TI: Okay.

JH: Yeah. Because --

TI: So, like nothing had, was different when you got there?

JH: No, no. Because the commission houses, some of their Japanese farmers were reluctant to harvest. They chickened out. So they're short on supply. All of a sudden they panic, not me or the distributors, because they already knew that I was their source of supply. And I finished harvesting 'til the middle of January, from December the 7th on, just like routine. Nobody stopped us or nothing.

TI: And then, eventually did the other Japanese start coming back to the...

JH: Market?

TI: To the market?

JH: No.

TI: So they stayed away.

JH: They chickened out, and I guess they just gave up. As a matter of fact, I was the only Nihonjin there.

TI: Interesting.

JH: Yeah, it's interesting.

TI: So did you ever tell the other Japanese, like, "It's okay to go to the market," that they're buying everything?

JH: You know, it didn't occur to me, like I say, the gravity of the situation.

TI: Well, so the Japanese farmers, they had all this produce, what would they do with it? They didn't go to the market.

JH: I have no idea. I have no idea. I was so busy making money. [Laughs] In the meantime, there's this girl that I was visiting.

TI: This is the Omori girl?

JH: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

JH: That's the only girl I knew. [Laughs]

TI: Good. And so did anything else change? So it sounds like your business went the same. How about, like with your girlfriend, did she ever say anything what she was concerned about or any fears that you heard?

JH: Meaning what?

TI: Yeah, I mean did you hear about, like maybe people getting beat up or anything like that, or anything?

JH: People what?

TI: Maybe getting beat up or name calling or anything like that?

JH: No, no. There was a situation -- you know this mileage limit, you can't go beyond five miles -- this lover had a girlfriend in Santa Cruz, got to go over the hill. He goes on Highway 17 and the cop stops him. "Where you going?" Says, "I'm gonna see my girlfriend. I'm gonna marry her." And would you believe, the highway patrol escorted them to the girl's house and they went to the county hall of records and got 'em married there?

TI: That's a good story.

JH: It's just the opposite. Didn't throw him in jail, he got 'em married. [Laughs]

TI: Good.

JH: Nobody could back out. [Laughs]

TI: That's funny.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.