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TI: So we're going back to Watsonville, and I think you mentioned some of this, but I just wanted to review. That Tony Tomasello was actually taking care of the farm, so the family had something to go back to.

HY: Yeah. In fact, when we left camp, even when we were going to Colorado, before we were going to Colorado, Tony Tomasello, and one of his friends, drove our cars to Poston from California. So my dad had left his car in my grandfather's farm, and they drove both cars out. Like my grandfather had a Pontiac, my dad had a Buick, and they drove them all the way out to Poston. So when we went to Colorado, we were able to drive our own cars.

TI: So this seems extraordinary, what Tony did for the family.

HY: Yeah.

TI: I mean, do you have an understanding of why he did so much for the family? I mean, this isn't that common.

HY: No. You know, I met him a couple times, I know we were at a restaurant, my dad saw him and went up to say hello to him and brought him over and introduced him. And I remember he was just a gruff old guy. You know how some people are kind of gruff, but you know they're really good. [Laughs] It was sort of like that.

TI: Now have you ever come across the offspring of Tony?

HY: Yes. At my aunt's funeral, his son attended the funeral. And he mentioned they had moved into that farmhouse, and they had kept my grandfather's dog, it was an old mongrel dog they called Zombie. But they took care of them during the war years, and actually, he was there when we came back to California, he was still there. And he remembers as a kid playing with a dog.

TI: And so when the family came back to Watsonville, they just moved out, went to their other place or wherever?

HY: Yeah. We weren't there when my grandfather went there first, we were still in Denver. So I don't know how that transition happened. So everything was intact, I guess, when I got home. When they left, I guess, they had an old shed, packing shed there. And the Shikumas' kids had left all their books and things in boxes in there. So I remember when we finally got there, my aunt Emi took me there and we went through some of the old boxes that she had packed away when she was, left for the war, and there were old books and things. She gave me a lot of her old books, things like Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know, the old style books that we don't see anymore. Wizard of Oz, things like that.

TI: It was almost like a time capsule of, like, three or four years ago.

HY: Yeah, which she had read as a child and now she's giving it to me.

TI: That's good. You know, the story of non-Japanese people helping Japanese families like yours, did you hear very many of those stories also from the Watsonville area? Is that, kind of, maybe more of a common story in Watsonville?

HY: Yeah. There was a family called the Hiuras, that's another big family. And Mr. Hiura had an apple drying business, and I remember, again, he had many friends in the Japanese business community. And I was good friends with those kids, and they, the kids that they knew were still their friends when we came back.

TI: And the sense was that someone in that community helped that family also with keeping the farm?

HY: Somebody must have, because somehow that dryer business, he got that when he got back. So somebody must have helped him.

TI: I interviewed someone from that family a long time ago, so I vaguely remember all that stuff.

HY: Most of that family became dentists and doctors and pharmacists.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.