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VY: So tell me a little bit more about the family nursery at that time, if you know anything about it.

FN: Well, it was very, very small. There were very, very few employees, you did the work yourself. And if you were able to hire somebody, it was usually a Japanese from Japan, immigrant, and so you would provide housing for them and you would try to pay them as well as you could. And I don't think the pay was that good, but it was more like, the relationship with your employers were more like friends rather than employee-employer relationship. And sometimes the employees would be relatives, so they were people that you were close with. Usually from the same prefecture, so I think... but I think it was really, really hard, because it was the time of the depression by the early 1930s, and it was very, very difficult, I'm sure, for everyone.

VY: So do you remember working -- I mean, you were very little -- but do you remember working or playing in the nursery when you were a kid?

FN: Well, we had very few neighbors close by, so our family kids were the kids we played with. We didn't have a lot of friends, 'cause we were out in the country. So we did have some close by neighbors, and I still try to see the ones that are still here, we try to get together. But I've lost so many of my friends now, so I don't get to see too many people. But we still do have some Niseis that are still living in the Richmond area, and I try to visit them.

VY: Were there other nursery families that were not Japanese American in your area?

FN: The one person that we really are very close friends with is the Francis Aebi family, they lived right across the street from us, they were close to us in age, so we've been friends. Francis Aebi was the person who took care of our property during World War II, and he was a very meticulous kind of person. And he always did things very, very well, very, very carefully, and so during the time that he took care of our nursery, he did a really good job, and it was Francis Aebi, Sr., who made it possible for our family to return to Richmond.

VY: Okay, we'll talk about more of that...

FN: Later. But he was the only person. But we do have friends that were in our area, and they were mostly Portuguese and Italians, and so those children were the same age as us, we'd go to school on the school bus together, and so those people were really good friends. But those people have left Richmond, are not really close by, so we don't have contact with them like we do with our fellow Nisei friends, and also the Aebis, because we're so close to the Aebi family, that we still kept contact with him. But I don't see our other friends that we went to school with.

VY: So at that time, what was your family growing at the nursery?

FN: We were growing mostly roses in the greenhouse, and in the spring and early summer, we also grew sweet peas in lath houses. And when they came out, our job was to pick the sweet peas and put them in bunches to prepare them for the flower market, and then my father would go to the market and sell them.

VY: How old were you at that time, when you did things like that?

FN: Well, my oldest sister, who's three years older than I am, would be about ten, eleven, and I was six, seven.

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