Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0007)

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TI; And so now I'm going to switch gears a little bit, and I'm going to now talk a little more about the Japanese American community history and the Watsonville community history before the war. And I know you weren't alive then, but you probably have some information that I wanted to ask about. You know, a basic question was, what was it about Watsonville that attracted Japanese immigrants? Why did Japanese immigrants come here?

MH: The first group of Japanese immigrants that came to our valley would come in 1895, Saburo Kimura. He spoke some English, and he was a Catholic, and so he's buried in the Catholic cemetery. The workers, the laborers worked in the railroad industry and also in lumbering, and that was true of the Chinese as well. And then later they'll start working in the fields harvesting crops. But this particular community of Watsonville is not necessarily unique, but it welcomed people who would be willing to work. So there were Croatians, there were Portuguese, there were Dutch, Scots, there were Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Mexicans, all working out the fields together. In fact, the poor lived right alongside one another in the outskirts of Japantown. So when, when children go to school, they go to school with the poor families of the groups that I just mentioned.

TI: And so in general, how did the different ethnic groups get along before the war?

MH: There were some animosity, but for the most part, if you worked hard, didn't get into trouble, you could, you could survive. Your reputation was important. One of the interesting things I learned was that at first, the Japanese workers in the labor organizations, associations, they didn't work very hard. They didn't have a very good reputation. Why? Well, because they were cheated out of their wages or hours, and you don't want to go back to the same guy, same employer and work for him if he's going to short you hours and such. So the workers didn't have a very good reputation in the beginning, and then somehow Emperor Meiji had heard about this, the Japanese workers didn't have a very good reputation, and he issued an edict saying that, "You will work hard regardless." And they obeyed.

TI: That's interesting. Do you know about when that edict was...

MH: I think about the turn of the century.

TI: Interesting.

MH: When I say century, I mean the nineteenth.

TI: Right.

MH: So Japanese workers will have a reputation of working hard, honestly, and so that becomes important when, when businesses like Sakatas, they needed a partner, you needed a partner because you couldn't own the land, because Isseis couldn't own the land in California. So you need partners, and you need good, reliable partners. And the first were the Travers, the Portuguese. And so that was the first company that was formed in the valley. It was a produce company.