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TI: And so when you got home and had to go to work, what would be a typical thing you'd have to do after school?

CH: Well, after school, okay, we'd change clothes for one thing. We couldn't wear our school clothes and go out in the orchard and do whatever. Then I would look for something to eat, and then I could hear my mother calling, so we had to go down to the packing shed. And generally, if it's around fruit picking time, help my mother pack. See, the fruit was brought in by horses, and then my dad would put the lugs and then dump 'em on the grader. And this grader that he rigged up, would get the fruit, go down two rows where it comes narrow, and then it gets wider and wider, so they drop according to size as they go up. And then my mother, and it would be slanted down like this on the packing shed, the packing table, and then my mother would pack them in boxes, and the boxes were... that's one thing I had to do, is make boxes. I must have made thousands of boxes. We put four baskets in there, and the boxes were two ends and two sides. And the sides you had to have tack three nails on both sides, six nails, and six nails on the other side, and then the bottom. And I had to do that, stack baskets and boxes that I made, and stack 'em up, and so have it ready for the next day. And then there were times when I caught up on that, I had to help pack. Then you get all the same size plums and put 'em all in the basket, six by six or four by four or whatever. And then that's all, you know, it's all hand labor. And you have to do it all, four baskets have to be the same, so on the outside, it would be four by four or six by six, and the arrangement of the fruit, and it tells you what size they were.

TI: And then after you packed everything --

CH: Then my dad would put the cover on, and then he'd put 'em on the truck and take it down to the fruit shed, to the Fruit Association.

TI: And during the fruit season, did he hire additional workers?

CH: Yes. We always, the Spanish families, we always hired two or three women that come and help pack the plums in the boxes. And that's why I had to get home from school to make boxes, to keep them, to be ahead of them all the time. So I had to make a lot of boxes.

TI: Oh, so you were one of the main box makers?

CH: I made thousands and thousands of boxes.

TI: So you got really handy with a hammer and nails.

CH: Oh, yeah, I used that hammer and tried to hit the nails so it won't bend, and hit it hard enough to go down in two or three hits so you won't have to do it over. I got pretty good at it.

TI: And how well did your father do with this business? Was it something that, did he have good years and bad years?

CH: Yeah, there's always good... it was up and down all the time. There were times when the fruit, like certain plums or certain peaches didn't sell, and we just let it drop.

TI: So when you have a bad year, really hard, what impact would that have on the family?

CH: Oh, yeah, well, then my dad would have... you don't make any money, so there's no money coming in. Like I said, he had to do other things like have a watermelon to sell, grow. Let's see, what else? Well, for one thing, I never felt that we were starving, because we always had chicken and eggs and all the vegetable and tsukemono. My mother put tsukemono and all the canned foods. So I don't think...

TI: So in a bad year, what would happen? I mean, how would you know it was a bad year for you? What would be different?

CH: Growing up, I don't recall ever... I always thought everybody was that same way. I never thought that it was a bad year.

TI: How about things like school clothes? In a bad year, would you...

CH: It was always my mother made them.

TI: Even in a good year, she would make them?

CH: Yeah. And then she'd buy enough yardage to make two dresses alike, and my sister and I always had the same dress. [Laughs] That just got me. Same dress, I mean, just made a little smaller for her, I mean, the same style in the pocket and everything. It was just...

TI: So it sounds like in even a bad year, you always had enough to eat.

CH: We always had enough to eat.

TI: You had clothes made by your mother.

CH: She even made coats. And my sister and I had the same coat, plaid coat, I remember. [Laughs] She'd buy enough yardage.

TI: Now, were you ever teased about that, that you and your sister ever wore the same clothes?

CH: No, we don't wear it at the same time. It was just that it was, I have a new coat, she had the same thing, it was only smaller size. [Laughs]

TI: So let me ask you this. In a good year, what happened? Did the family do anything special when your father, when the business had a really good year?

CH: No, I don't remember any good year, bad year or anything like that. I know there was a depression during the '30s and all. But in those, I would say that we always had enough to eat. The only thing is we never, my dad would buy a piece of steak, a sirloin steak about that size, and that would serve the whole family. You mix it with sukiyaki, mix it with vegetables and stretch it out. And I used to pick that meat out because oh, I loved beef. I'm sick and tired of chicken. We have chicken all the time. But that was, that's only during the Depression and all. Oh, I think everybody was in the same boat.

TI: Now, did you have family friends, maybe at church or something, who, during the Depression, had a hard time, that people had to help out or anything like that?

CH: Help out?

TI: Yeah, like maybe bring food, extra food or things like that?

CH: We never, I never thought of feeding people like that, uh-uh. Like even now, you hear where they, people are all in a bread line and stuff like that, and I'm sure there was. But maybe I was too young to even think about that kind of stuff. We always had prunes, so I never...

TI: Or how about this. When, during harvest time, did your family bring extra food to, like, the minister, the minister's family or anything like that?

CH: Uh-uh. I think, you know, my parents might have made some for the minister's family. I think we, a lot of people donated fruit and peaches and stuff to the church, I mean, to the minister's family, because they didn't have any, other than... they did have a garden, I remember the garden.

TI: The reason I ask these questions, I interviewed some other Niseis whose parents were like ministers or doctors. And in rural areas, oftentimes they were paid with produce.

CH: Produce, yeah, whatever...

TI: If people didn't have money, they would give them food or other things.

CH: That's right. We didn't give money. No, money was a little hard to get. I remember we wanted... every Sunday I think we got five cents, my parents gave us five cents, my sister and I, my brother, and my dad would take us to Rocklin and we'd buy an ice cream cone, and that was a big deal. A cone was five cents, and strawberry was my favorite. [Laughs] Of course, that was during, I think, in the '30s when it was real depression years.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.