Densho Digital Archive
Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL Collection
Title: Shoichi Kobara Interview
Narrator: Shoichi Kobara
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Watsonville, California
Date: November 18, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-kshoichi-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So you were in Utah for what, about six months or so?

SK: Six months, yeah.

TI: And then why did you leave Utah?

SK: Well, it snowed so much, you're up on a hill, and I'm driving truck up and down. And as the snow got more and more, those canyon, narrow, and one-way road, lot of 'em, got, was narrow. But as the snowplow keep pushing it off to the side, the road seemed like it's getting wider and wider. And I thought, "One of these days, if I slip and go to the side, I'm gonna fall over." And it was getting cold, I says, "I can't stand this." 'Cause I don't know, not like California, because Utah, the summertime, too, they call, what they call cloudbursts. It'd be sunshine here, but up on the hill you could see black cloud. And one time I was driving up to load up the truck, and they call, what they call tipple, where they throw the coal in as they bring it out of the mine. And you back right up to there and they open it and fill it up. Just as soon as I got up there, the boss's brother said, "Get out, get out." He said, "Get out of the truck." So I jumped out and went up to the side. And about five minutes later, the water came down like, into the truck and everything went down the canyon. If I'd have stayed there five minutes longer, I would have been gone, too. They call it cloudburst over there, and it just, when it rains, it just let loose. It's not that -- yeah, and then the sun comes out.

TI: But you'd have these cloudbursts, and then a flash flood would come through the canyon.

SK: Yeah, because it's all hill and canyon in there. So I was talking to one of the Japanese farmers there, and he says if you have seen what they call in summertime, hailstorm. And overnight, he says, you have a ranch here with tomato or something, and another guy has it over here, and it happened to pass over yours, they said it looked like a cattle went through it. It just knocks it right out. It's not like California, I would say.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.