<Begin Segment 4>

DG: Did your family, was your family farm --

KS: I guess so. I think it was about ten dollars per person per -- it wasn't much, but I think it was about ten dollars, every Saturday, see. Yeah, every Saturday, once a week, so we went to American school five days and then Saturdays we used to... then when summer vacation came along, then we went six days a week, until August.

DG: I'm just trying to understand whether your family farm was more productive than maybe some others and so your parents had more, a little more money?

KS: I, yeah, well we, it was all horse and, horse and buggy days. They had tractors toward the end, so as we got mechanized we got bigger, I suppose. But we were too small to -- well, we used to help on the ranch alright. I couldn't wait for my chance to get on the tractor, to drive the tractor. Oh yeah, I loved that. I'd stay on it all day, all night just about. [Laughs]

DG: So what were, what was your farm growing?

KS: We were growing spinach, onions, and other crops, other fresh vegetables to market. We used to take it to, my father used to take it to the market. Then we started to grow, as I got older, and my brothers, we were helping more on the ranch, we started growing cannery tomatoes, cannery spinach and things like that. Yeah.

DG: What would be the difference between spinach grown for a cannery and spinach grown to sell at the market?

KS: Not too much, not too much. Well, to the market, we had to cut it by hand, got to be more careful and you had to take all the bad leaves off, but to the market, they just came along with a tractor, attachments on the tractor and just cut it right along and all I did was just pick out, take the weeds out. The rest of the wilted leaves and everything went into the crate. They sorted that, sorted everything out at the cannery. But that didn't last long. Spinach harvesting was maybe three weeks, I guess. Yeah, that's about it. Then as soon as they quit, then we, after they stopped receiving spinach, then we had to, they were still growing again. Spinach, once you cut, that's it. It doesn't regrow, so, but only thing, some later ones come up because the seed wasn't quite matured. So afterward, well, I guess we'll use it for home use. But we used to take it, I guess my father used to take it to the market.

JS: So where did he, where was the produce market?

KS: Right by the bridge, I Street, I mean, no, it's... well it's a nice bridge now. What is that, L Street?

JS: Downtown.

KS: Huh?

JS: Downtown Sacramento?

KS: Yeah, downtown Sacramento, where that...

Off camera: The Tower, Tower Bridge?

KS: Tower Bridge. No, past Tower Bridge.

Off camera: Past the Tower Bridge. The one past it?

KS: Little past it, where the new bridge is there now. I don't know what you call that bridge, but, I forgot, but right about there. Tower Bridge and a little below, we, they used to cross that tower bridge, yeah, and the market was right along the river.

Off camera: That's like, that's like east F Street or something.

KS: Something like that. That's about, yeah.

DG: So that was a wholesale market.

KS: Wholesale market, yeah.

DG: So in Los Angeles, there was a wholesale market that Japanese had a big stake in. Did Japanese...

KS: Yeah, he was part owner, I guess you might say. He was a member of the groceries or whatever, producers I guess, producers. And I don't know if he got any rebate or what. I don't know, but he used to pay into it too. But it was just seasonal, spinach, and I don't know what other, carrots, a little bit of carrots and maybe green onions he used to plant.

DG: So how often would he go to the market?

KS: Once a week.

DG: Once a week.

KS: Once a week, yeah.

DG: And was his land, was the land leased?

KS: Leased, all leased land, yeah. We couldn't own it. Japanese couldn't own land at that time. They, we could've bought it, as second generation, we could've bought it, but no, he decided -- they were all intending to make enough money to go back to Japan, so they weren't thinking about the future as much.

DG: And did he continue to farm with his brothers and his father?

KS: No. No, he farmed, his father went back to Japan, and his brother, they moved to Stockton area, so he was farming by himself.

DG: So how many acres did he lease?

KS: I would say maybe sixty acres, maybe forty to sixty acres, I guess. Yeah, then when we got bigger and helped on the ranch, driving tractors and things like that, then we got more neighbors to, that wanted us to farm their land. So we used to farm quite a bit.

DG: So that original lease, do you remember the name of the landowner?

KS: It would be hard. No. I don't know, there was a bus driver named Taylor, his last name was Taylor, but, and he couldn't farm it because he was a school bus driver, so we used to farm his land 'cause they were next to us. Yeah, we used to farm there. Neves, Neves brothers, I guess, same thing, they was on the other side and we used to farm. My father did.

DG: Would that be a lease arrangement?

KS: Yeah, lease arrangement. Yeah, every year, certain cash rent. Never, never long lease. Then when my brother got older, well, then we talked about lease and this and that, and we used to have a long term lease then, five, three, five years or so. Because otherwise another person could come in there and take all, pay a little bit more rent or whatever and take over the land, see. So we made a long term lease with the owner so we could continue to farm, because we, he couldn't buy it. Although he was born in Hawaii, but, he could've bought, but he thought he can't buy because, he being a first generation, he thought he was still a first generation, but he could've bought it, or we could've, in our name we could've bought it. Quite a few of 'em did that. They bought land through the son's name.

DG: Like the Sakatas.

KS: Yeah, Sakatas and the other, quite a few of the other farmers, yeah, they did the same.

DG: Who else owned their land? The people we've talked to haven't.

KS: Clarksburg, there was a few. Sakai, S-A-K-A-I, Sakais... I guess they were one of the bigger ones. And of course, well, they weren't, there was families, there was quite a few families, but they didn't all farm, you know what I mean? Yeah, they, I don't know what they were doing, but they probably worked on the farm, but they didn't farm themselves. And of course, like when I was going to school, my grade, there was forty people, pupils, forty pupils in the class and twenty, twenty-one were Japanese, half the class. That was just by the, before the war. So when we had to go take a shot to go into camp, half the class was gone. We'd look around the class, half the people's gone. [Laughs] They all had to go take, get their shots.

DG: You had to get shots before you left for camp?

KS: Oh yeah, we had to get, I don't know, three shots or something like that. Whenever we change... that was one of the government rules, I guess. In order to enter camp you had to be, everybody had to have a shot.

DG: So we'll get to the war in a second, but I want to ask a little more about farming. So at harvest time, did your father hire short term labor?

KS: Yeah, they used to have Filipino neighbors. They used to come and help. Yeah, we used to hire them, my father used to hire them at the harvest time and busy, any busy time. They helped.

DG: Do you remember their names?

KS: No, I couldn't remember. They were here one year, next year they're gone, another family would move in, this and that. And they all, they didn't, they were all like regular Japanese. They were, they just came here to try to make a living and then go back to their own country, see, so they were -- in fact, at least my family and most of the Japanese, brought their wives here, but other nationalities, they, I don't know why they were restricted or what, but they couldn't bring their wives and stuff, so they married other nationalities, Chinese and those. We were... I don't know.

DG: So there weren't Filipino kids at your school?

KS: There were maybe one or two, one or two. Clarksburg never had any blacks. They didn't want to work on the farm, anyway. They were working in town, and Clarksburg was a small farming area school, so there were a lot of Japanese and Chinese and Portuguese, fishermans, and regular Caucasians, landowners. Yeah, we got along alright.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.