<Begin Segment 12>

WH: You didn't stop farming after you left Heart Mountain. You continued to farm here in the Santa Clara Valley?

ES: Well, we had our own farm, in other words, we owned the farm. My father's, being an alien of Japanese ancestry, but he bought the property before the law against Japanese buying property in 1913, he bought it in 1907. He came, immigrated to California in 1900.

WH: So how much property did you have after?

ES: Well, we owned our own property, about 50 acres. But after coming back, we had 175 acres to farm.

WH: And how long did you farm that 175 acres?

ES: Well, we farmed 'til the government had decided that cyclamen, we cannot use cyclamen no longer as sweetening, put the sweetening in our canning fruit. So all that year's growth and delivering, harvesting, we didn't get one cent. So we went bankrupt; all the pear growers went bankrupt. Then three years later, the government declared that cyclamen is all right, perfectly right to use. So what can you do? You're broke, you're gone.

WH: What year was that that you went bankrupt and lost some of your land?

ES: I believe it was 1948 or something, '48 or '50.

WH: So were you able to hang onto some of your land?

ES: Yes, we were able to hang onto our land because it was all paid for. But the farmers who didn't, had mortgage, they just couldn't keep up their payments, they were taken away, and lost it.

WH: So you didn't lose your land, but others did?

ES: Now, I didn't, we didn't lose our own land.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2005 Densho and The Japanese American Film Preservation Project. All Rights Reserved.