<Begin Segment 7>

TI: Okay, but before we go there, so John Brown knew your father. Did you know any of John Brown's children?

EI: Yeah, Brown, and there's a lot of... I'm about ten years older than the guy, but there's an insurance company he has. There's quite a few.

TI: Okay, so his son was older, ten years older than you were, so you didn't know him as well. Okay. So let's talk about all the businesses that your family had in Walnut Grove. So can you describe all the different things in Walnut Grove that your family did? So you had the bar and then the grocery store, what else did your family do?

EI: What else? We supplied the camp, asparagus camp, and they work and they contract and supply the food to them.

JS: Oh, you provided food to Canal Ranch?

EI: Yeah, to the camp.

JS: To the camps there.

EI: Then at the end of, half year later on, we get all the money, whatever leftover. We made pretty good money, I tell you.

TI: And back then, what was "pretty good money"? How much money do you think your family, like every year, how much would they make, do you think.

EI: Oh, one season, about four thousand.

TI: So that was good money.

EI: Good money, those days.

TI: And when you made four thousand dollars, what would your father do with that money?

EI: Well, keep it for the next business, tomato farm, or beets, sugar beets farm, we'd go and supply them.

TI: So when you watched your father do business, what did you learn from your father?

EI: Oh, a lot of things, what he did. He had the guts to do that, the people, the money, I thought, "Oh, maybe I gotta do that, too." By yourself, I don't think, you give me the money, I wouldn't be able to lend the money to them. Dangerous. Overnight, they would all run away.

TI: I'm sorry, who would that be? Can you say that one more time? I didn't quite understand that. Can you tell me that one more time? I'm asking, so what did you learn from your father? And you're saying you watched him, and you thought you could do the same thing? But I didn't quite understand everything.

EI: Well, I don't know how to explain. They don't pay the bill, that's the main thing. That's why we gotta watch out. So I'd collect the bill.

TI: So make sure your customers pay the bill, that's what he told you, okay. And what else? So make sure people pay bills, what else did you learn from him?

EI: What else? Not much.

TI: How about Japanese values? Did he ever talk about Japan or what it meant to be Japanese?

EI: No, lot of things happened those days, during World War II.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.