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TI: So let's go and talk a little bit about the impact of the alien land laws on your family and the other Japanese farmers in this area.

LI: Well, when they had to let go of their leases, well, initially, the Indian agent was Don Carr, and he kind of resisted. And he said, "You know, this is a federal reservation. We're not subject to the state laws." And a lot of the tribal people kind of stuck up for the Japanese leasing because they were very good lessees to the tribal members. And they got along very well, and I think had a lot of respect for the tribal people. And so a lot of the tribal people spoke in favor of not removing the Japanese, but the Department of Interior secretary was Albert Fall. And so what he did is he stepped in and removed Don Carr, who was kind of resisting the resisting the state law, and replaced him with somebody who would implement the state law. And once that was implemented, all the Japanese essentially lost what they had broke out of sagebrush, and they became sharecroppers. And if it were not for the kindness of their tribal friends and neighbors or their Caucasian friends and neighbors who allowed them to farm portions of their properties, they probably wouldn't have survived out there, they would have had to leave.

TI: And so was it a case that it was pretty much the same land that they, but it shifted from the Japanese actually leasing and controlling it, that they just now became the sharecroppers for pretty much the same land?

LI: Well, for my family it wasn't the same land, it was other parcels of land that their friends had control of. And it was really kind of... I guess it was illegal for people to even let the Japanese sublease. And so my grandmother said it was like farming like a mole under the ground. [Laughs]

TI: So explain that. Farming like a mole underground?

LI: It's a subversive kind of way to do things. You're kind of doing it, you weren't doing it, everything wasn't above board. You were kind of getting around things by doing this, but it was because the friendship that they had with their neighbors that allowed them to continue farming. I mean, it wasn't at the same scale that they were used to farming. Instead of 120 acres of ground like they were farming with hay, wheat and potatoes, they had to convert to what my grandmother would call the mizumono crops. So, like, mizu is water, and so they're water loving, labor intensive crops of cantaloupes and tomatoes and watermelons, rather than potatoes and wheat and hay like they were used to growing.

TI: And were those water loving crops, what was the distinction of these water loving crops? Are they more difficult or they're...

LI: Oh, yeah, they're more difficult to grow, but more labor and more management intensive crops. But they were a higher return per acre so they could use a smaller acreage and still survive. But they couldn't really thrive like they were with the larger acreage.

TI: So going through kind of this land transfer that was happening because of the alien land laws, so in the case of your family, they weren't able to, after the alien land laws, lease and farm that land they were doing before that. Who took over that land? Who ended up farming, leasing and farming that land after your family left?

LI: That I couldn't tell you.

TI: Because I'm trying to get a sense of, so who benefited in the Yakima Valley when this happened?

LI: Well, the excuse that they used was they said we want to make room for the returning World War I veterans, okay, and the Japanese were occupying all the good land. And so my guess is it's probably the later folks who came in the '30s who were jealous, or the later '20s, that were jealous of what the Japanese had acquired. They came after the Japanese. But I don't know.

TI: So I'm curious, I'm thinking of some things I read in the book The Burning Horse. And so this transition kind of happened. And what some of these new farmers didn't realize was how hard it was to farm in the Yakima Valley. I mean, previously, you were talking about how well your grandfather was doing in the farm, and they were doing well. But when others started taking over the land, doing it, a lot of them did not succeed, and they were only here for a short period of time before they actually left. I mean, was that something... I read that in the book, and I was just curious, does that seem true?

LI: It makes sense. Farming's not easy, especially if people are coming to the country or from out of the area. And everything looks easy from the outside, but when you actually have to make a crop and make sure you're doing all these operations in the right order in a timely process, it's not as easy as it looks. And so it wouldn't be hard for me to see people becoming very disenchanted with farming and looking for an easy way to make a living.

TI: Yeah, so it's these newcomers who maybe have some resentment and they wanted this land, it sounds like quite a few of them actually didn't succeed and had to move on. So going back to your family, so this is early 1920s, it's a great story about your grandmother coming and doing the piano lessons, the voice lessons. But fairly shortly, she started, they started raising a family.

LI: Oh, yeah.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.