Densho Digital Archive
Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL Collection
Title: Kitako Izumizaki Interview
Narrator: Kitako Izumizaki
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Watsonville, California
Date: July 28, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-ikitako-01-0003

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MA: So your parents did sharecropping for a while, and then you were telling me they --

KI: Yes, then they rented out, as the kids, like as we grew older, we would be able to help more. And he used to be -- I remember we had the truck farm, and we had patches of everything you can think of from turnips to carrots and spinach. And my father used to supply the stores in town, they'd say, oh, they want two dozen turnips or something, we'd go out in the field and dig 'em up and wash 'em and bunch 'em and he'd deliver them.

MA: And when did they start the truck farming? How old were you?

KI: Oh, I was, gee... I wasn't, I remember living there since I was a kindergartener, and we moved out of that ranch when I was in high school, so we were, I know it was in the early '30s.

MA: So he started truck farming in the early '30s?

KI: Yes, in the early '30s, late '20s and early '30s I think. And then after that, we moved out and we did sharecropping and strawberries and that's all we did until the war broke out, we were on our own. We had rented our own, by then, we were, the kids were all older. So my father said, "Well, why don't we rent our own place?" and that's what we did. And then the war came and so we had to leave it.

MA: I see, so you started out sharecropping, and then once the kids got a little older to help out, then the truck farm, and then farming, but you were on your own.

KI: Yes, we were on our own.

MA: So I'm curious, with the sharecropping and how that worked, how many families were working?

KI: Well, we, when I was a little kid, about three, I remember they used to call it the cannery, and there were several homes all in a bunch. And in fact, even today, one of the family, the boy is my age and so he remembers living in a cannery and how, yes, but when I was in high school and my father was sharecropping, at that time, we had three families living right around, and we call it the "camp."

MA: Were the families Japanese American?

KI: Yes, Japanese, they're all, the parents were Isseis and the kids were all Niseis. In fact, you will interview Nancy Iwami, and she used to be our neighbor, 'cause she was one of the three families that lived there at one ranch, that we were all sharecropping, I remember.

MA: And who was the owner of that ranch?

KI: It was a Mr. Toda, he was a Japanese, yes. I know that they evacuated, I don't think they went to camp, I think they evacuated when the war came, I don't know, I don't remember 'cause we weren't living there at that time.

MA: So that's interesting that it was a Japanese owner. Was that common for the Japanese to have...

KI: Well, maybe he, well, since he was the, I don't know if he owned the property or if he had rented it all and then sublet, I don't know that. 'Cause those kind of things, business things, we never bothered. But anyway, he was the one that came around and did what the boss does for a sharecropper.

MA: And what was your house like at that time when you were sharecropping?

KI: We used to laugh. When the wind blew, it blew in from one end of the rooms to the other, like. I used to think to myself, "Gee, we need to plaster another roll of newspapers on the wall." And today, the Mexicans, the farm workers, they get good homes, and I said, "My goodness, here we were just freezing to death." [Laughs] Yeah, 'cause nobody cared, you know. It was pretty bad, but at least it was a roof over our heads.

MA: What about when you went into truck farming? Did you move to a different area?

KI: Well, we had a, we had a nice house there. The property had a real nice house, and I know my mother -- well, I don't know who it was -- put an addition to it. And you know, during that time it was Prohibition, and my mother used to brew sake, and she was real good at it. And she used to supply the Japanese restaurants in town with sake, yeah.

MA: Interesting.

KI: And my, my older sister told me once that our family never did have a black spot except that my father had to go to jail, because when he was delivering the sake, he was going through this apple orchard and it was during apple season at, and it was just at that time there was a lot of thievery on the apples. And so when the cops saw this covered pickup with, coming out of the apple orchard, he was stopped. And then they saw what it was, and so...

MA: And he was put in jail?

KI: Yeah, bootlegging, I guess. [Laughs]

MA: That's interesting.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.