Densho Digital Archive - Emi Yamamoto Interview (denshovh-yemi-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

MA: So I wanted to know about your move to Watsonville. So you said that was 1928, so you were about sixth grade or so?

EY: Yes, exactly.

MA: And you said your folks started sharecropping.

EY: First, 'cause they didn't know how to raise strawberries, and so there was a chance, lot of Japanese people, when Depression hit, they went into sharecropping. And we got through the Depression, and when I was in high school, my father decided to be on his own. And there was lot of group of people, Japanese people, who wanted to start their own farming.

MA: So he went on independently.

EY: Uh-huh. My father didn't -- I was the eldest, and I had to learn driving and run the farm.

MA: That must have been unusual for a woman to have those responsibilities.

EY: Yes. I was the only one girl, about the only girl shipping out the berries, you know, hauling and bringing to the truck company that takes the berries up, the freight company that takes the strawberry into San Francisco and Oakland market. And for L.A. shipment, I take it to the depot and they, the train used to run with all the berries to L.A.

MA: And so you would drive yourself?

EY: Yes, I would haul everything. I was about the only girl.

MA: Did people treat you differently because you were a girl?

EY: No. It was just, I didn't even know the difference.

MA: How did you learn how to drive?

EY: Oh, a foreman of the, the original, when we first came to Watsonville, he was a strawberry sharecropping. And lot of Japanese people were sharecropping, that means we raised the berry, and they used to take all the berries, and the company had to do all the shipping and everything. And then we learned how to raise strawberry from that, and then about ten years later, lot of Japanese people, my father decided to be on his own instead of sharecropping. And while we were, in the first part of the farming, our foreman was a Japanese man, and he taught me how to drive. Because my father only drove a Model T, and here we had a chance to buy a car, and it was a used car. But then our foreman taught me how to drive, and that's how I learned how to drive. And then -- 'cause I didn't trust my father's driving, he was driving Model T, so I learned, he taught me how to drive a gearshift car. And from there on, I picked it up. And my parents decided to be on their own. And I was responsible for doing everything.

MA: Right, that's what you were saying.