Densho Digital Archive - Nancy Iwami Interview (denshovh-inancy-01-0003)

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MA: And when your parents were in Watsonville, what type of work did they start doing?

NI: Oh, they were, most Isseis like my folks were what they call sharecroppers. And so in those days, it was mostly farm work, strawberries, and being a sharecropper, that meant you did everything yourself. They gave you the land and, I mean, worked their land and you did all the work on it. And therefore it was not hundreds of acres, it was just families, so, oh, maybe two, three acres, five acres, something like that. And besides, in those days, Watsonville was more into apples, so it was, there weren't that much, there wasn't that much open land until the strawberry business came in so good lately that apples are all gone.

MA: And the strawberry farming, I've heard, is difficult because you have to move around...

NI: In the old days, yes, because we didn't have all this chemicals where you could stay and fumigate and replant. In the old days, uh-uh. The land was pure. We could eat the dirt and didn't die. And so that's how it was, we stayed about two years and moved. At the most maybe three years, but they said the third year wasn't very good.

MA: And would you move close, close by?

NI: Well, we'd find another, maybe a place where they'd say, "Would you like to sharecrop our land?" So some places, these, the bosses, I call, had a camp or whatever, you know, for each sharecropper, a home for each sharecropper. Not a real one, just cabin-like, but still, it was livable. And so we'd stay there, and if there was more, more than enough land nearby, well, then you could use that land and stay there. But other than that, we had to move.

MA: How many families would be working, sharecropping on these farms?

NI: I'm, I can't remember living in a large camp. The most I recall was about, there were about six, six, some were larger, you know, six families were living where I was at one time, and I guess we only had about two acres or so apiece. And the family did all the work. And so my folks would say, "Oh, I wish someone would hurry up and come so you kids could help, you know, work on the farm." And labor, well, no mechanical things were used, it was, at the most, horses. And then like my brother was telling me that horses couldn't be racehorses, they had to be old nags that didn't run away from you when you were working the furrows. So, well, if it was a large farm, I guess, the boss had, you could borrow it. But when we went individually or rent, then we had to get our own horses and equipment.

MA: And the people who, the bosses, the people would own the land, who were these people usually? Were there ever Japanese people who would...

NI: Well, we always had Caucasians or other nationalities, civilians. But I don't, I can't remember, maybe there were. Sakatas were big farmers here, but I don't know if they did (strawberries or only lettuce).

MA: And what was your relationship like, usually, with the boss? I mean, was it pretty...

NI: Well, they were pretty lenient as long as you did your own, what your own business, what you're supposed to do, I'm sure. I can't recall because by the time I got out of high school, (...) we were renting, so we had to do everything on our own.

MA: Okay.