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BN: What were your parents doing in terms of occupation as you were growing up?

KM: Good question. My mother always worked. So because she had been a seamstress or went to school sewing school, she took in sewing when we were little, when we lived in Boyle Heights, and she made all of our clothes. So she took in sewing. They called it naishoku, taking work in. And then I remember this white guy would come and pick up the bundle, and she would sometimes be frantically working at night trying to finish the job. Yeah, I remember that was very stressful. And she got a job working at a, sort of a department store in East L.A. called the First Street store. So she was working there when we were in elementary school. And then she got, then she was working downtown in the factories, and so we would get a lot of the sample clothing, like some of the dresses that were made as samples. And so she got a job there through another Nisei friend, and I would have to wear the sample clothes. She would bring it home and say... oh, and I was actually very, I was very particular. I was probably not a very easy child. I was stubborn, and I liked dolls, of all things. Cooking, baking set, all that kind of stuff. And so if the dress wasn't, if I didn't think I liked it, I said, "I don't," I would really put up a fuss. Even though it was economically, I needed to wear that dress. But I gave her a hard time. So she did sewing, and then later on, to another friend, she got a job in the wholesale jewelry business downtown. A lot of Nisei women, because they were trustworthy, worked for this diamond, wholesale diamond guy, and he had no children of his own, no. So there were like six or seven Nisei women that worked in this place, and you're dealing with diamonds, so you've got to have people you trust. So she ended up working there until she passed. And my father, he was always into produce. So he worked at different markets, took the bus, had two jobs, apparently, took one to one job and another, and then eventually got, started working at markets that had union jobs. So ended up at Gelson's Market, which is...

BN: High end.

KM: High end, yeah. So we always had the best produce, because when he came home, he could gather whatever he wanted, say, "This is how much it is," and so he'd bring it home. And again, another job, we had a lot of Nisei men, and so he had a lot of friends that were Nisei men even though he was keeping... he never wanted to be a supervisor, I think he might have been asked to be, though. I can't quite imagine my father, but he never wanted to be supervisor, but he had wonderful calligraphy. So when they needed signs for some of the jobs, they'd make these handwritten numbers and boards, I remember him always painting these things. So I guess in the early days, maybe some of the markets had butcher paper signs. I don't think Gelson's did. I can't imagine Gelson doing that. So these were these other markets, like Market Basket.

BN: Right, right. Now that you mention it, I do remember always seeing Nisei men as produce clerks in all these markets growing up. It was a, kind of another little occupational niche.

KM: Very much so, yeah. And then my father would say people would ask him to pick out a watermelon, he didn't know it. "This is a good one," yeah.

BN: Natural Japanese, you know...

KM: Skill.

BN: Skill, yeah. Part of the myth of the Japanese gardener, this inherent ability with produce and plants.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.