Densho Digital Archive - Kitako Izumizaki Interview (denshovh-ikitako-01-0021)

<Begin Segment 21>

MA: So did your parents, did your parents resume farming at that point?

KI: No, no, no.

MA: So they lived with you and your husband.

KI: You know, my father never was too healthy anyway, and my mother went day work. She went, gee, when she first came back -- 'cause she was still pretty young yet -- so she went working with the labor group, and then later she went to pick berries for Akiyoshi brothers. Yeah, she worked until she had to quit because my brother's wife died and left three kids, and my sister-in-law said it was her duty to go there. And I said, "It's not, it's not her kids," but she went anyway. And I think that's what really killed her early.

MA: And then what, what about your in-laws? What profession did they do before the war?

KI: Oh, they were same like everybody else.

MA: And then after the war, did they resume that?

KI: She, she was a... my mother-in-law went to work in a cannery and stuff, day work, yeah. And you know, before the war, the canneries in Monterey used to have that sardine. And for a while after the war it was pretty good, but it's petered out. But then the frozen food industry, I thought the frozen food industry would be here forever because they built a great big cooler and stuff, but now it's all gone, too. Because I remember I used to work at night shift on Russo's Frozen Food. My husband would work during the day, and when he'd come, 'cause usually I don't get called, would work on night shift. If it's peas or something, it might be twelve o'clock or two o'clock in the morning, and then I'd always be finished before the kids had to get up and he had to go to work. That's what we used to do sometimes when we were first starting out. I always laugh and said, you know, we couldn't, when we got married, I didn't have any money and he didn't have, 'cause I was coming out of camp, and he being a soldier, didn't have any money. So when we got married, we didn't take any wedding picture. And then his mother kept saying, "Well, gee whiz, you guys got married and everybody wants to know if you really got married, we don't even have a picture to show 'em." I said, "We can't afford it," so she sent us a twenty dollar bill. So we took the twenty dollar bill and got our picture taken. So I tell everybody, "If you work hard and you're, you know, be sensible, you could make a good living." But I think those days are gone forever, you know. Because I said, "We started out with really nothing," I said, "we couldn't even afford a wedding picture, and look where we are now." But oh, it's different.

MA: So what did you, you said you worked for a couple years at the frozen food place. What did you do after that?

KI: Oh, I worked for a while after that as a secretary to the Naturipe Strawberries, until they changed office location. And then my kids were bigger, so I just started volunteering for... I never did have to go to work after that 'cause my husband just kept getting better pay, better pay.

MA: And what did your husband do? What type of work?

KI: He was a, I call him an executive farmer. You've heard of Bud Antle company? Well, while it was still Bud Antle, inc., he used to run all the farming around here, all the way from Watsonville, Salinas, and the valley, out into the valley. But not, he never did have to go to Imperial Valley, but everywhere else, he did that.

MA: So they owned, that company owned a lot of the farms in this area?

KI: Well, no, the company, they owned some land, but then most of them are like, the big farmers around here would have a contract with them to get the lettuce cut and stuff. It's mostly all like that now, you know, big company, you sign with them and they handle the crop, they cut it and everything, pack it and ship it. But he used to do all the planting, growing.