Densho Digital Archive
Friends of Manzanar Collection
Title: Bill Watanabe Interview
Narrator: Bill Watanabe
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: February 8, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-wbill-01-0004

<Begin Segment 4>

SY: So the, but it's interesting that they were into the flower business so early, and the flower market, do you know anything about the formation of the flower market? Were they involved in that, the Japanese...

BW: I don't know how actively they were involved, but they were members, from what I could tell, early members. My understanding -- and I'm not a historian so I may be wrong on this -- but the Japanese flower market got started first, so there were many, many Japanese flower growers all throughout southern California and so they needed a central market from which they could market and sell their flowers, and so they formed, I think, the Southern California Flower Market Association. And there were hundreds of farmers, and so they all put in money and they owned shares. My understanding is a few years later -- and this was strictly for Japanese flower growers -- the non-Japanese flower growers formed their own market called, I think theirs was called the Los Angeles Flower Market. And they, and so they, the Japanese flower market was on Wall Street or something, here in downtown, and then right across the street the L.A. Flower Market formed and built, so they were kind of like right across the street from each other. And one was Japanese, the other was everybody else. I'm told it wasn't like animosity. It was... [laughs] people trying to sell their flowers.

SY: So did, but in the Southern California Flower Market, they restricted it to just Japanese Americans who were, or Japanese farmers?

BW: You know, I don't know if it was restricted, but everybody was Japanese and they probably spoke Japanese. So that's why the non-Japanese formed their own market, to have their own place where they could come and sell. But I don't think they said, you know, "They're terrible, they're racist." They just said, "Well, we got to do that too." So I'm saying all this stuff not really knowing for sure, but I've never read that there was animosity or anything. And then when I was a kid, back in the '50s, I did go to the flower market, the Southern California Flower, Japanese flower market, and everybody was Japanese. By that time they were mostly Nisei and some, maybe some older Sansei, selling flowers. It was kind of neat. There were hundreds of stalls and people selling flowers. And then you go across the street -- and of course, I didn't know what was going on at the time, I was too young to understand the history of it -- but you go across the street and everybody else was selling their flowers. And so the buyers, they would go to here, and then cross the street, go there, buy this, and then go back, and so it was basically one big central flower market, but it was two separate histories. But unless you were looking for it, you may not even notice the difference.

SY: Because it never retained the name Southern California Japanese Flower Market?

BW: I don't know if Japanese was in there.

SY: Ever?

BW: I think it was Southern California Flower Growers Association or something like that.

SY: So, and to this day, it still exists.

BW: Yes.

SY: Only it's not, not limited to just Japanese flower growers. Or is it still?

BW: I don't know. But they had shares, and that share allowed you to have a stall. And then you could transfer those shares, so I think my grandfather sold his share to somebody else, the Endo family or something, and -- I should follow this through -- and then when my father wanted to get into the flower business there was some kind of a connection between my Furuyama grandfather and then my father taking over some from somebody who got his share from, you know. So it was....

SY: So you actually had to --

BW: I'm sure there was kind of these ties there back then.

SY: -- buy shares, and it wasn't, it was...

BW: There were a limited number of stalls, so if you wanted to sell there you had to somehow get a stall.

SY: So the, when they left to go back to Japan, then they had to give all that up as well, pretty much.

BW: Yes. I don't know what they did with it.

SY: And I think you mentioned, the crop that they ended up, what was, so they started out growing, do you know what they started out growing and what kind of flowers they ended up growing?

BW: You know, I wrote it down, but I can't remember. But I remember, like marigolds and larkspurs or things like that that I'm not that familiar with. When I was a kid, though, the family had pretty much settled on three main flowers, chrysanthemums, carnations and anemones, and that's basically what we grew.

SY: When you were kid much later. This was...

BW: Yeah, like a teenager. But when I was younger we also grew asters and snapdragons, stalk. But like I said, in that, 'cause I remember we were working on those flowers, but by the time I was a teenager that's all we grew, were chrysanthemums, carnations and anemones.

SY: Cut flowers, then.

BW: Yeah. I think those sold the best and our family knew how to grow them, so that's all we did.

SY: I did, I did read in here that your grandfather, I think they raised violets, which is...

BW: Violets, yeah.

SY: Violets, because they're not necessarily cut flowers.

BW: No, I don't know how you would actually market that or farm that on a mass basis. [Laughs]

SY: But that was what they --

BW: But he tried all kinds of things is what I heard.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.