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BN: And then you mentioned moving to California. Could you talk a bit about that now, how your father, well, the whole family comes to L.A.?

NK: Yes. During that period, in 1930 when I was born, I was born, naturally, in the state of Washington, and as soon as I was born, I like to say 1931 to '32, my father gave up his job at the sawmill and decided to move down to Los Angeles area. And in Los Angeles area, I don't know if it was word of mouth, but he ended up in Venice, California, and with the money they had, he ended up with a Ford truck that he used to haul vegetables from the farm to the wholesale market in downtown Los Angeles. And this is in that period between 1931 and 1935. And from 1935, he decided to start his own farm. Back in those days, the main crop was celery, and everybody back east and everywhere wanted celery. And so all the farmers in the Venice area grew celery once a year and it was shipped to various places throughout the United States, and it was a very well-known place for celery.

BN: So what are your first memories, which presumably would be in Venice?

NK: Well, when my father started farming, naturally, anybody that can do any hard labor were recruited out of the family, so that included my father and my mother. And at that time, my siblings, brother and sisters, still in Japan getting educated, so there was just the two, father and mother. And during the year when the busy season came, there was a lot of Hispanic workers that were available then, so they used to pay him, as I remember, like twenty-five cents an hour, which was the, almost a foreman's wages. And so the workers were getting anywhere from a nickel to a dime an hour. And I don't know if my parents were kidding me or not, but I remember them telling me stories of workers that worked for them.

BN: And then a few years later, can you tell me about going with your mother to Japan? Your sister, too, right?

NK: Oh, one of the things that stick to my mind is, in 1935, at that time at Venice, the family consisted of my father, my mother, and my sister Kazuye who was two years older than I was. And the four of us, we lived in Venice, California. I don't know if there was a reason, but my mother took myself and my sister, Kazuye, and the three of us went to Japan to the old homestead in Shiga-ken. And as it turns out, my next oldest sister Shizuye, who is married now... got married later to Kenso Kiyohiro... the four of us -- my mother and Shizuye and Kazuye and myself the four of us returned from Japan in 1935, the summer of 1935. And that was the first of the siblings that were sent to Japan that came back to the United States. And that happened in 1935, and it was a one-month vacation for myself and my sister, Kazuye.

BN: Do you remember much about meeting, because there were two other siblings in Japan, too, who stayed there, do you remember much? I mean, you were only five, I guess, but about meeting these brothers and sisters for the very first time?

NK: Yes. Surprisingly, when I went back to Japan in 1935, I remember my aunts and my uncles, and I had my sister Shizuye, who came back to the United States with me, was there, along with my oldest sister Chiyeko, and my oldest brother Minoru. And naturally, the two siblings passed away, I didn't know that they died before I even was born. So I had very, very sketchy memories of them except for what my parents and my siblings had told me about it.

BN: And then when you came back to Venice, you were about the age of having to start going to school, so can you tell me a little about your memories of going to school and then to Japanese school?

NK: Yes. In 1935, we came back from Japan, and again, it was the beginning of my school days, and at five years old, the local high school, the grade school and high school was Venice High School and Machado grammar school. I went to, when I started the grammar school, I had no knowledge of English, because at home, Japanese was the only thing spoken. And so even my first day at school, when they did roll call, the teacher called my name out and said, "Noboru Kamibayashi," she didn't say it that good, but it was enough to know that they are trying to call me out. But when I heard that Noboru Kamibayashi, I blurted out to the teacher that, "That is not my name." I tell them, "My name is Boya," because in the family, I was the last of the siblings, and they just... that name was given to me by an elder -- might have been my mother and father -- because I was the youngest, they called it Boya, which meant like a junior or a little baby. And that's what I thought my name was, and so my teacher had to tell me at the first day of school that, "No, your name is not Boya. Your name is Noboru Kamibayashi."

BN: What name did your friends, what did your friends call you when you were a child?

NK: Going through grammar school, I was used to the name Boya more than anything, because it's something, I didn't go around telling everybody that that's not my name. But that just stuck with me.

BN: Even friends?

NK: Yes, my friends, they all call me that.

BN: Even today? [Laughs]

NK: No. There's very few, that's a name that just sticks with a person that's maybe five or six years or younger. And as they grow up as a teenager and older, naturally they don't use that anymore, and it's kind of embarrassing when a person that's twenty, thirty years old, being called Boya, because people would kind of put their hand to their mouth and start giggling.

Off camera: Doesn't Mrs. Shishido still call you Boya?

NK: Hmm?

Off camera; Doesn't Mrs. Shishido still call you Boya?

NK: Yeah, there's a group of people that... in the local area that went to school -- Japanese school or English school --and these people that I'm talking about are, like, past ninety years old, and they look at me and they say, "Oh, Boya." I mean, saying that to an eighty-nine year old person is kind of embarrassing. But on the other hand, it just brings back memories of eighty, ninety years, and it's good to know that people remember me for that length of time.

BN: And I guess from their perspective, you'll always be a few years younger from their perspective. That's funny. Were a lot of your friends and people you went to school with, was there a fairly substantial Japanese community (in that area)?

NK: Yes. The Venice area had thrived with Japanese farmers growing celery, and it was all being farmed. There were people who had mostly leased theland and grow their vegetables. Celery was the main crop, but between crops (during the year), they would grow things like string beans or cabbage or whatever else. It was like a guessing game for the farmers because if they picked the right item that there's a scarcity of at the time, then they would get good money and they would hit the jackpot. But if everybody happened to grow the same thing, the market got flooded with it and prices dropped, and so it would become a bad year.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.