<Begin Segment 19>

VY: So let's talk about how long you worked in the nursery business, and when did you retire?

FN: I retired... I worked in the nursery business after I graduated from school, I came home, and I started working and I worked for forty-two years, and we closed the nursery, the actual growing operation, in 1999. But we still have some things that we have to manage, because we have our property still in Salinas, that we do not operate. And so I do go down to Salinas every once in a while just to look at the property. I do go to check out the property, I go also to visit my friends in Salinas, because Francis Aebi, Jr., is still living in Salinas, and he's also retired. And then my other friends that are in the nursery business. But in the last few years, I have lost quite a few of my friends, which is very, very sad, but I will try to keep doing what I can. And my work that I do within the community keeps me very busy every day, so I'll try to keep doing those things.

VY: So did very many children of nursery families go into the business as well?

FN: Well, many of them did, not all of them. And I still see the children of Shimi Shibata, because they were active in the nursery business. And Robert Shibata still has a wholesale business in San Jose, but I have not seen him recently, but I'll have to go visit him. And Shimi's widow is living still, and I have not seen her, but I see her daughter, Naomi Shibata, because she does volunteer work within the community, and so we run into each other once in a while. But the people that are my contemporaries that started working with me, they all retired, and most of their children did not go into the business, I would say.

VY: So are there very many Richmond-area nurseries left?

FN: There are a few left in Richmond, but none are being operated by their families. If they're still there, they're leased out, but it's very, very few, very, very few. And most of the greenhouses are not, they're taken down. We took down our greenhouses about ten years ago. This last year we sold our property, so we don't own property in Richmond anymore. So I had to leave the nursery and we have a house, it's still in Richmond, that's still close by. So after we closed the nursery, I still had a little greenhouse on the nursery, but I don't have that greenhouse this year anymore, so I'm not going to go to the greenhouse anymore. It's been, my little test greenhouse has been taken down. So I used to grow roses in my little greenhouse, but I don't do that anymore. Our property is gone.

VY: And what has happened to that?

FN: Well, they took down, we took down all of the greenhouses and left a few service buildings up, but our house and everything is now, the ground is bare. And so the property is, I don't know exactly what they'll do with the property, I think it will become an industrial kind of complex. I'm not sure, I can't say.

VY: Is there a lot of development in that area?

FN: Not yet, not yet. It's, this sale has just happened recently, so they're just cleaning up the property right now, and I don't know what will happen.

VY: Was it hard to do that, to sell the nursery and take the greenhouses down?

FN: Well, to me, in a way, it was. Because I'm the third generation, and I feel like somehow I let my grandfather down. Because he worked so hard, he just started with a small piece of property, and we did build it up, but in a way, I feel very sad. But you know, being practical -- and you have to be practical -- it's impossible to grow floral crops in Contra Costa County with the situation that we have today. It's practically impossible. But you know, recently, I was in front of my house on the nursery, and I saw a truck go by. And they had these structures, trusses. Do you know what a truss is? They had trusses on, and they were greenhouse trusses. So I followed this truck, and it stopped right down the end of Brookside Drive, and they dropped off these trusses. So every few weeks I would drive by and see what they were doing, putting up greenhouses, and we had just taken down this enormous number of square footage of greenhouses, and our neighbors. And I finally decided that they must be putting in greenhouses for marijuana.

VY: That's the new industry.

FN: It's the new industry. But it's just a small operation, it's nothing compared to what we were doing. It's kind of crazy to me. So we will see what the future will hold for the next generations to come that follow us.

VY: Well, okay, so when you look back on the experience of you and your family in camp and what they went through to keep their business going after the war, what do you want people to know today? What do you want them to come away with?

FN: I want people to know that no matter what happened to the Japanese and Japanese Americans, they still believed in America, they still knew that it's, life is not easy, things don't always work out, but you have to have this samurai spirit within you. You have to keep this idea that you will succeed, and you have to keep moving on, no matter what kind of hardships you face, you have to do that. I think that that's what we learned from our parents, because that's what they did, and our grandparents, that's what they did.

VY: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us today before we end?

FN: Well, I want to say thank you for this opportunity. I want to say that I didn't speak out all during my adult life, and I just realize now how important it is to share the Japanese experience with my fellow Americans, because I think that our story could be repeated again. And I think that we have to be able to tell our children that you must be ready to speak up and help the new immigrants. We must be able to speak up and support those who are marginalized by our government, and if you don't, then America will not move forward. Thank you.

VY: Thank you, Flora, thank you.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.