<Begin Segment 20>

DG: And then so your father-in-law had already started working in the greenhouse.

FN: Well he must have started working in the greenhouse and then, then, up in Queen Anne, but then, this, this place was available in, where we are now, where I am now, that greenhouse. And that was in, around 1921. But since those days, citizens couldn't buy property. The youngest daughter, the daughter was born after the, she is the, they were able to use her citizenship. I don't know how they did it, but Isseis, a lot of Isseis did that.

DG: Well they assigned a guardian.

FN: Uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh yeah they did. Uh-huh, that's it and they were able to, to buy that greenhouse where I am now.

DG: And was it called Columbia Greenhouse then?

FN: I don't know what it was called.

DG: From the start?

FN: And the house that on the hill from us, east of us. That, the Nordstrom family used to live there. And so my dad was really, my husband was really friendly with the Nordstrom family. So every time we'd go in the store, grandpa, the father would, would say twenty, twenty-five years ago, the father would go, "Oh, how are you Mr. Noji." [Laughs] I remember that...

DG: Well so your, your business was a real pioneer business.

FN: Well in those days there was a greenhouse in Renton, right near Renton.

DG: Owned by Japanese?

FN: Suzuki, they ran Japanese and there was another greenhouse... south of us. There was quite a few Japanese running restaurants, running greenhouses. But that was the easiest thing for them to do, growing things.

DG: Well they couldn't own large tracts of land.

FN: No, uh-huh.

DG: And so maybe the Japanese, I read somewhere are really skilled at making use of the really small unwanted areas and things.

FN: Unwanted areas.

DG: So maybe greenhouse was a small area that you could...

FN: Because there were quite a few. The Kodamas ran a greenhouse too. But I don't know whether they started that early or not.

DG: Well do you think yours was, your husband's was one of the first.

FN: I can imagine they were among the first.

DG: Because I read somewhere that in, when the war started around, there were kind of like eighty greenhouses in Seattle and of them, fifty of them were owned by Japanese.

FN: Uh-huh, I know, I don't think there were quite that many.

DG: I guess there were.

FN: But the, but the -- I know they used to have a, an organ, organization.

DG: Just for the Japanese greenhouse owners?

FN: Uh-huh, Japanese greenhouse owners. They used to get together, yeah.

DG: It's supposed to have next to dairy farming, greenhouses were supposed to --

FN: Oh is that right, is that right...

DG: Uh-huh, have brought the most revenue in the Japanese community. Did you think it was a good business?

FN: Well it was always a good, we were able to do all right.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.