Densho Digital Archive - George Hiromoto Interview (denshovh-hgeorge

<Begin Segment 6>

DG: So I have a farming question. So during the Depression...

GH: Depression?

DG: The 1930s, it sounds like your family had a lot of acreage, still leased, right?

GH: Yeah.

DG: Nothing was owned. And were those hard times or did it work out okay?

GH: Because the company where we sold our product, they're in business, so it didn't matter what nationality they're dealing with. So that was okay. Lot of company weren't happy to have business with us, you know. So we used to have business with these produce company and factory company. Yeah, we used to take, like sugar beet, they used to have a train or barge, the boat, yeah, we used to load onto them and take it to the factory. There was a factory in Tracy.

DG: What were the names of the produce companies that you would sell to?

GH: Well, sugar beet is Holly Sugar, Holly Sugar Company, and they were from Woodland -- I mean, Stockton. And then there was another big company in Imperial Valley, they were all sugar beet company.

DG: What about the beans and the asparagus?

GH: Oh, beans we used to sell to the market, wholesale market.

DG: In Sacramento?

GH: Yeah, Sacramento.

DG: And asparagus, too?

GH: Asparagus to Sacramento. It was a cannery where they produced, they cooked their asparagus into can. Well, you've heard of Campbell's soup now?

DG: What was the name of the cannery?

GH: Campbell's soup.

DG: Oh, it was Campbell's?

GH: Well, I used to send it to Bercut Richards.

DG: In Sacramento?

GH: Sacramento, yeah. And there used to be a company named Libby, Libby & McNeill.

DG: And at the market in Sacramento, did you have a stall or did you sell to a broker?

GH: Well, they had... we just sell to the cannery, and then they process the product, and they sell it on their own. When it comes to selling in the can, we don't have anything to do with that, that's canneries.

DG: What about the beans?

GH: Beans, we had it in a sack, and we used to sell to market and then they delivered to wherever they wanted to.

DG: But did you have a stall at the market?

GH: No, we just set a, they had a warehouse over there, and we just take it over there, and whatever they do is their business.

Off camera: You sell to a wholesaler.

GH: Yeah, it was a wholesale. And they sell all over the United States.

JS: So was your father's English very good?

GH: Not the best.

JS: No?

GH: He was born in Hawaii, but it's not the best. But somehow or other he communicated, and in the meantime I came along, so I'm all in English.

DG: So when you were a teenager, what kind of jobs were you doing for the farm?

GH: Oh, I drove, like driving tractor. Well, we had some, like raking and things like that, hand rake, hand shoveling, oh, yeah, we did a lot of hard work during that time.

DG: After school?

GH: Yeah, or during the summer vacation.

DG: All of your siblings?

GH: Yeah, all my siblings were helping my father, you know.