<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So going back to your father, did he ever talk to you about the type of work that you should think about getting into? As you got through high school, and did he ever say, "Sho, you need to, think about this or think about that"?

SK: Well, I wanted to be a carpenter. Carpenter or architect. And when I went to high school, I took mechanical drawing and stuff like that. But then when I was in about the junior year, union representative came to talk to our class. So I asked him, "Could Japanese get into the union?" He said, "No, Japanese can't get into the union." So I went home that day and told my father, "What's the use of my going to high school? I can't in the union or something, can't get that kind of job, so I want to quit." He says, "No, you finish high school. Regardless of what, finish high school." Because those days, high was like now, you gotta have at least two or three year of college or you don't ever get any job. But he used to be proud... in the old days, anyway, Japan thought farmers were the backbone of the country and they grow food and everything. Said, "Don't be ashamed to be a farmer," he says. "You're gonna, everybody become a doctor," he said, "who's gonna feed the people? The farmer's the backbone." That's when I decided, well, that's the only way I'm gonna get ahead, so concentrate on farming.

TI: So let's talk about, so high school, what year did you graduate from high school?

SK: 1941.

TI: Okay, so this is, like, June 1941. Now, what did you do after you graduated from high school?

SK: Went to work, I mean, run the farm, helped my father.

TI: Okay, so at this time, your father, how large was your father's farm?

SK: The last ranch we had was eight acres, strawberries. And that was considered pretty big for a single farmer. 'Cause most of 'em were, big farmers had lot of sharecroppers. A normal family farm, three, four acres, that's what you could take care of.

TI: And at this point, did your father or the family, did it own the land?

SK: No. We were gonna buy one, twenty acres, and it was fifty dollars an acre in Salinas. We went to look at it, nice place near Natividad. But then we went, strawberry you had to have a well, there's no well there. So my father and I went to the well-digger, he says, "Salinas is hard to get water. It's gonna cost many more times than that land is worth." So that's when we decided to lease that ten acres one more year, and then one more cycle. That's when my father knew the real estate man, his name was A.V. Rianda. And he says -- 'cause I was only nineteen, I couldn't lease, sign the lease. So he said, "I'll become your guardian," and then I leased it in my name. Then the war started, we lost everything.

TI: Okay. So this Rianda became your guardian, that allowed you to lease the land.

SK: My name.

TI: Under your name. And this was that ten acres?

SK: Uh-huh, yeah.

TI: And then that's when you said, then the war started and you lost all that.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.