<Begin Segment 3>

DG: Do you have some memories about when you were little and what you did?

TS: My earliest memories are working on the farm, basically. And as I grew older, I got more responsibility and we had some people, farm labor, young kids and an Indian family, working for us. I could remember in the real serious Depression years, we paid as little as ten cents per hour. It's quite a stretch from ten cents per hour to what is being paid this day in 1998.

DG: So we're talking about the late 1920s and early 1930s?

TS: That's correct.

DG: Right. And your father, what was he doing at that time?

TS: My father was on the farm. He used to bring the produce from the farm to the markets and he, like many other farmers are unable to dispose of everything they brought to the market. So they had to distribute the excess to various markets. And also if they couldn't get completely rid of their produce, they brought it to the Pacific Fruit which is sort of what they, Nihonjin called nakagai.

DG: Middleman?

TS: Yeah, and they would render a statement after they got rid of the produce by saying so much sold. Usually they took a fifteen percent commission and they then sent a check and the rest they would say, was dumped. That used to get my dad, because he felt that the farmers were being victimized. He finally organized the Farmers' Cooperative Shipping Organization to ship the surplus out of the valley to the east and middle west.

DG: Who were the main markets?

TS: Well, what farmers would do is bring their produce to the shed. People working in the shed would wash and pack the vegetables, load 'em into the (railroad) cars and sometimes the railroad car would be pre-sold before it rolled out of Sumner, Washington. But a lot of times they were not pre-sold, so my dad had the job of comtacting various commission houses on the way to New York City and some he would sell in Omaha, some in Kansas City, some in Chicago, some in Buffalo and some as far as New York City.

DG: Was there any reason why they called it... what was the name of it?

TS: Puget Sound? No.

DG: I mean it was a Japanese organization...

TS: It was a Japanese farmers' organization.

DG: Was there some reason why it was particularly Japanese?

TS: It was just the way it happened.

DG: Were they not able to market their foods some other places? Is that why they formed the Japanese co-op?

TS: No, for one thing, they had the problem of communication in their meetings. For some reason ,they didn't, they never admitted, nor did the Italian farmers seek to be admitted to this organization, that I'm aware of.

DG: Were there other big firms around that they competed with?

TS: No, well, Japanese farmers formed cooperatives in Auburn, Kent, also in Bellevue and they also... so these three associations, used to meet frequently during the year to discuss mutual marketing problems.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.