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TI: And we talked earlier about your father's business and how kind of in the mid '30s it was really booming, went really well, but then at some point there was a downturn for him.

JK: Yeah.

TI: And so when did that happen?

JK: I want to say, I think the middle '30s. He went into the farming business and lost so much money there, and then I guess he got late with the payments on his trucks and everything, and pretty soon all the trucks were gone. And I remember it got so bad that my dad had to have me and my brother and sister turn in our little student bank accounts. We might've had fifty bucks by then or so, but he, and then he had a pickup truck that he had on payments, and then the guy came and repossessed the pickup truck. And so now he didn't have anything. He was down to walking.

TI: But how did your father handle this? I mean, from being very successful, able to send the oldest daughter to Japan to a private school, and then really have this downturn, how did he deal with all this?

JK: Well, the best of my knowledge, my dad was a tough cookie. Remember I told you he had that samurai ethic? And he just sucked it up, and that's a whole other story, but he had a friend there that he got to know in Imperial Valley that had a gas station, and he got to know this gentleman by name of Mr. Hatton, from the early '20s -- remember I told you he used to go down there with a truck? -- and he started buying gas and tires and stuff. And Mr. Hatton had an old car, and so he let my father use his old car, and that's how he stayed in contact. And then what he did was he had these independent truckers, the gypsy truckers, he would bring them in and he became a broker for them. Because he had the contact with all the farmers, he'd arrange and then he would get a commission from all the truckers. And as the economy started coming back again, he might've had like six or eight independent guys working for him, and so that's how he was starting to make his financial recovery. And then, of course, the war came along, so that ended that part.

TI: Okay. Before we go to the war, anything else before the war you wanted to share? Any other thoughts or stories?

JK: No, I don't know. Imperial Valley, it's just, it's a place where a bunch of kids live, it gets hot in the summer, and it's a farming community kind of a place. I don't know, we had a lot of fun, Fourth of July. I like to tell the story about, remember I told you we lived along the highway, we lived between the highway and the railroad track, and this was the main highway between El Centro and then Mexicali, and so, like during the watermelon season the truckers would bring a bunch of leftover watermelons, and they'd give 'em to my brother and me, my brother and I, and then we'd take 'em on roadside, put a number on there or whatever and sell these things. And we always thought that was fun. Boy, we were making money like crazy. That, it's easy enough. And the truckers all liked us, so they'd bring us more and we'd sell more, so classic stuff. And I mention this because in later years -- and remember now, my children, right, my daughter, she's my only daughter, bless her heart, during her college days she became a corner flower stand girl. That's what she did for her pocket change.

TI: So it reminded you of what you and your brother did.

JK: Yeah. And so here I am, I was so proud of her. I said, "And she's got, she's a chip off the old block. She wants to go out there and hustle, make some bucks." She started out sorting flowers in the shop back in the hills, and then she graduated to the flower stand on the corner there in Oceanside.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.