<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Earlier you mentioned how the Chinese had to leave certain areas, and then they went across the river. Can you explain what kind of event happened that kind of forced them to go across the river? What was it that happened?

MH: I don't know exactly what had happened, but Watsonville had a large sugar beet plant. We were known for our sugar beet production. It subsequently moved to south of Salinas, called Spreckles, in fact, it was the Spreckles Company, the Chinese provided the labor. When the company moved out of Watsonville, there were some problems with the Chinese who didn't move to, to Salinas. And the Chinese were expanding a little bit further, further north of Japantown. And some animosity there, because on Maple Street, at one time, that was the residential area for the upper middle class of Watsonville.

TI: So what's interesting to me is, when you say expanding, so by this time, you had the Chinese Exclusion Act, so there was no more integration of Chinese to the United States.

MH: Right.

TI: So with Watsonville becoming a place where after they would finish the railroads and things like that, that they would start migrating to, is that...

MH: The Chinese didn't go, they did some farming in Gilroy and Salinas, they didn't do that much farming here. In Santa Cruz and in Monterey, they went into fishing, fishing for squid and abalone. And on the old maps, there's a little beach near Aptos, Capitola, called, it used to be called China Beach. We're trying to get that name back, it's called Brighton Beach now. But we want to get it -- I take it back -- it's Potbelly Beach, and we want to get it back because of the Chinese history there. Fishing villages were in Pacific Grove, which is near Monterey. And then where, there was a fishing village, Chinese fishing village on Pebble Beach, the golf course, on the eighteenth fairway.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. How about the Japanese? Did they go into fishing?

MH: In the Monterey area, yeah. Here, our guys were more into sport fishing for perch, striped bass.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.