Densho Digital Archive
Japanese American Museum of San Jose Collection
Title: Eiichi Sakauye Interview
Narrator: Eiichi Sakauye
Interviewer: Jiro Saito
Location: San Jose, California
Date: February 8, 2005
Densho ID: denshovh-seiichi-01-0022

<Begin Segment 22>

JS: Let me get back to, you earlier described the land as being like "hillbilly" country, sagebrush. What made you think that you could actually grow something in this soil?

ES: Well, in farming business, like the Isseis did when they come from Japan, you had to study the soil and so forth. And like I said, that behind this barbed wire fence, we have all sorts of talent, and if we can only tap them and use them, which we did. And we're very grateful to be able to communicate with the Issei telling them that, why we need to grow. So we got our heads together and we had seedsmen from Washington clear down to the Arizona border. We had farmers from north to south. They grow different types of crop, and their seed programs, it's entirely different one area to the other. So we put, and then we have soil agronomist, we have chemist, and just name it, we had surveyors. So we asked them to help us, and they especially, we had to know the weather conditions, whether, when we have danger of frost and freezes, so then we have to get in touch with people who grow certain crops in certain area, like in Washington, Wapato people grow crops under very difficult condition. Well, in Southern California, they'll grow crops under hot tents or brush, to break the winds. And mostly comparing our condition in Heart Mountain is similar to Wapato, Washington, area. So now we got the seedsmen together, and checked through all seed catalogs we can get. What variety or what strain of each vegetable can we grow and harvest in that short period of time? And we did lots and lots of research and lots of study, and these people from Washington knew the hothouse business. So we asked the administration to help us to build hot frames and, in the warm part of that building there, close by where the, where the cold winds won't hit, the warm sunshine would hit. And these people from Wapato made these hot frames.

JS: Could you, could you kind of describe it, a little bit about "hot frames" and what's involved there?

ES: Well, a hot frame is what the people Washington area do. They do some of it over here in California, but primarily over there, when they have a climate similar to us, they dig into the ground, put the box, make a box, and make it slope so the sun will hit it just right, then we dig inside the box and put in compost. We had to go around the farms around there to get compost. Put straw on top of this, and put soil on top of that, and put the good soil on top of that. Then we grow our seeds. Then we have a netting over this square box, whereby we can roll the canvas over at night when it gets cold. So that's a daily job. Open it up during the day and close it during the night. And that we start germinating seeds from there. But then we start, after we get the germinated seed, we have these little short seedlings, then we have to transplant 'em and do that same thing with these hot frame, so that the plants will be ready to plant out in the field when the danger of frost is over, which we did. And like bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, some of the melons, we did under the hot, hot frame. The people in Southern California area, grow 'em under hot tents, and when the weather gets a little bit warmer, it's all right to use the hot tents.

JS: Hot tents are what?

ES: Hot tent is a plastic little hut, so to speak, and the seeds are planted inside, out in the field, open field. That is done a little bit later, so we need the skill and knowledge of those people, as well as the skill and knowledge of northern part of the Western Defense Command area, and we grew these plants, transplanted out in the field, and it turned out to be very successful because these people knew what they can do. And not only that, we had a agronomist, who would take sample of the soil, depth of the soil, the nature of the soil, and match the crop to the soil, or the vice-versa, soil to the crop. Other words, growing daikon, which is a deep-rooted crop, and has to have very sandy soil to make a beautiful daikon.

JS: It's a long, white radish.

ES: Right, long white radish. In order to grow grain for the hogs and chicken farm, we don't need such fertile land or anything. So we picked out the land that's gravelly, and can grow grain on it, and get a grain crop out of it. So selection of area to be, these crops be put in, was very important to us.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2005 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.