<Begin Segment 10>

KO: So how soon after arriving back was your father able to establish the nursery?

RO: Oh, I would say about three years after we got back, (...) we used to have a shack for an office for the nursery, and then in 1947, we built that flower shop building. Then in 1958, we built a hall next to the, where the nursery was. We quit the nursery business and built that building, and we used it for a hall. In those days, when Japanese had a wedding, they have China-meshi, and Mandarin Restaurant used to cater the dinners in our hall. We had, they called it Onishi Hall when they first put up that building.

KO: So you were, it was pretty busy. Who, who ran that? Your mother and your father?

RO: I did all the grunt work. I had to put up the tables and take down the tables and put up the chairs and clean it up.

KO: So a lot of your spare time in junior high was spent helping out in the nursery, in the hall.

RO: Yeah, you either had to work in the nursery or my dad always had to do something. I didn't have that much spare time.

KO: So was it basically just your mother and father and you, or did you hire friends or family?

RO: Yeah, they had, at that time, my uncle and aunt came from Hawaii and they worked here for about five years. And they didn't like it 'cause it was too cold, and they went back to Hawaii.

KO: Okay. What was a typical day like for your father?

RO: He'd get up very early.

KO: And go to the flower market?

RO: Well, when he had the nursery, he spent a lot of time picking up shrubs and such, and then he used to grow his own pansies. And then we used to buy a lot of bedding plants from the Neishi Nursery in Oakland. But my dad specialized in pansies and tuberous begonias. They just sell it by the boxes.

KO: Uh-huh. Were most of his clientele Japanese or Caucasian?

RO: Caucasian.

KO: Why do you think there weren't many Japanese clients?

RO: Not too many -- excuse me, could you repeat that, please?

KO: Why were there more Caucasian than Japanese clients, customers?

RO: Japanese weren't too much into planting flowers in their gardens like Caucasians in those days.

KO: So they didn't care that --

RO: The Japanese were barely scraping by in those days, so they didn't have time to plant all these ornamental plants and bedding plants.

KO: So your Caucasian clientele came from all of San Jose, or just Japantown area?

RO: Pretty much in this north side of, north side.

KO: So your mother and father worked in, in the nursery themselves with your help?

RO: Yeah, nurseries are very labor-intensive. Especially in those days, you didn't have all these modern tools, and so it's very labor-intensive.

KO: So what kind of chores were you doing?

RO: Excuse me?

KO: What kind of chores did you do?

RO: Oh, I did all the jobs nobody else would do. I was low, low man on the totem pole, so I pretty much had to do everything my dad told me to do.

KO: Like what was that?

RO: Oh, I used to move the dirt around, 'cause we had a small nursery and had to move the dirt around quite a bit. Dispose the soil, and then I had to, my dad made this one tool where we used to buy these old cans from bakeries, and then you'd have to take the lids off. And my dad invented this thing that's pointed like a "V," and then you would just poke it in and the lid would come right off of those cans. Then we would plant the shrubs in those cans. In those days, you use five-gallon cans and gallon cans and you put all your shrubs and plants in those gallon cans. They didn't have these plastic cans, pots like we do today.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.