Densho Digital Archive - Jiro Sugidono Interview (denshovh-sjiro-01-0025)

<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So Jiro, we're gonna now start the third hour, and we've just finished covering sort of the, your time in Europe. And where we left it was 1946, and you were being discharged, and now you're returning to Watsonville. So why don't you, why don't you pick up the story there. So what was it like when you returned to Watsonville?

JS: Well, you know, I don't know. Maybe I'm simple, but I didn't find no discrimination or anything like that, 'cause nobody said anything derogative or anything to me. And, but you know, my mother, as soon as I came home, she's one of those Issei that always want to make sure that you're working. So she got job, job for me right away, at the Hiura drier, apple drier.

TI: It's Hiura? What was name again?

JS: Hiura, Hiura.

TI: Hiura, okay.

JS: Hiura. It's that apple drier, and they don't operate that no more, but anyway, that's where most of the Japanese was working.

TI: Now, when you say "apple drier," so they would take apples, they would slice them up?

JS: They'd cut it up.

TI: And then just dry them?

JS: And then they'd put it in a net, you know, like a net, and they'd put it in sulfur, and I guess they'd cook it or dry it that way.

TI: And then once it's dried, then they would...

JS: They would sell it to the army or whatever.

TI: I see. And so how big an operation was this? How many people were working there?

JS: Oh, there was a lot. There was, I don't know how many peeler there was, there's a bunch of peeler, maybe ten, fifteen peeler, and there was a lady that cut the bad part off, and there's... my work was to, after they put it on the tray, to lift it up and put it on the whatchacallit, place where they could put it, where they could put it in the roller. [Laughs] I, at first, I couldn't get used to it when they go up on top, I don't know how many tray I dropped. You know, you got to get that knack of it, to take it up and push it in. And sometimes, if you don't do it right, you just drop the whole works.

TI: So you had to be pretty strong to do this, was it heavy?

JS: Oh, (yes). (Yes), well, it got so that as you go higher, it gets heavier.

TI: And so about how many people would, would work at the...

JS: Oh, heck, I think there was, seemed like the whole Watsonville Japanese, they were doing quite a bit. Gee, I guess there was more than twenty, thirty people, maybe more. (Yes), 'cause they had some guys working on the upstairs, and there were people working on downstairs. It was an old drier made of wood, so... and I guess it wasn't worth it to open a drier, 'cause they moved to [inaudible], but after that, they just, they quit. I think another country took over, they got cheaper labor, you know.

TI: Now, if this job wasn't available, what else did people do?

JS: Oh, (yes), later on I went, that was '46, later I started working out in the field. (Yes), I was still young yet, and so I worked with, what do you call it, Bill Hirano, and he, he was a 442nd, too, he was kind of like a contractor, so he had a bunch of Japanese, lot of younger people and some older people, he contracted with the hakujin guys on this, thinning lettuce and things like that. So heck, we used to have race to see how, how fast we could go, thinning lettuce. I made a mistake, now I found out my back hurts quite a bit now. (Yes), when you're young you do a lot of foolish things.

TI: So lots of different types of jobs coming back.

JS: And then, later on, I liked to work outside, so they said there was an opening in Saveria. It's like a strawberry, bushberry canning place, and they want a foreman for raspberries. I didn't know nothing about it, but I just said I was willing to work, so, "Okay, you're hired." So I went to Morgan Hill, and for one year I went to work over there and didn't make any money. So later I came back to work at a place near Watsonville, and they're finally, one of the foremen, the Japanese foremen said they, guys want to, looking for a Japanese guy, whatchacall, that does insecticide. So I went over there, and that was John Ura, he hired me as a field man there. I think it was run by Shimizu of San Jose, they have a strawberry crate, thing, they used to have crate, wooden crate that time. Now they got paper, see, that they used to sell insecticide, your fertilizer and everything. I went, worked there for a while, and then finally in '46, I met my wife, and we was gonna get married. My father, he got kind of worried and says -- 'cause I was working day wages, said that he didn't think I could make a living that way. So he told -- he didn't tell me, but he told John Ura to tell me if I wanted to go partner in strawberry. So I said, "Okay, I will," so I was a sharecropper for them, and that was a bad year. It was 1958, and...

TI: Was that 1948 or...

JS: '58.

TI: '58, okay.

JS: And the... freezer was so cheap, it was only eight cents a pound, couldn't even make a -- 'cause when the time to give me my half, it wasn't enough, his half, he gave me, still didn't make any. So finally, I just, I don't know, I still stuck it out and went on my own in 1959. And I did, I did good enough to raise my family, you know, but they didn't make any money.