Densho Digital Archive - John Nakada Interview (denshovh-njohn-01-0003)

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RP: Let's talk a little bit about your mother. And can you pronounce her first name for us?

JN: What was that?

RP: Her first name?

JN: It's Kagi Ikehara. That's her maiden... so she became Kagi Nakada so it was Kagi Ikehara Nakada.

RP: Okay, and so your dad goes back to Okinawa and finds his bride. They get married there and then they come back here.

JN: Yeah.

RP: In 1916. Tell us about your mother. Share some reminiscences about your mother.

JN: Well, I think she was a very peaceful person and she was very hard-working. And she's very demanding and she didn't like the wifely things that women do like cleaning the house and all this, so she delegated a lot of the work to the kids in the family. And so my older brother said that... I'm way back down below so he says, "You're lucky you didn't have to change diapers and clean the house and cook." Because my mother wanted to be out on the farm with my father and work on the farm. So that's what I remember about my mother and then also when they went back to Japan in the 1920s, even in America the women didn't have any rights. But she said she wanted all her children to be born in America so that's why we came back to America. Now isn't that crazy? So that's one thing I remember about my mother is, you know, when she has her thoughts and she's saying this is what it is going to be, that's what it is. [Laughs]

RP: She kind of wore the pants in the family.

JN: Yeah, oh yeah, she demanded a lot of things and my father listened to her. [Laughs]

RP: That's unusual for that time.

JN: Oh yeah, in the '20s and '30s, women didn't have any rights at all and especially in America and in Japan it was worse yet. The women didn't get their rights way after, way, way after America did. So it's really a crazy culture. [Laughs]

RP: And where did your mother and father settle when they came over in 1916?

JN: They first settled in the Los Angeles area and it's an area called Fruitland and it's between Vernon and Maywood in California in the Los Angeles area. And that's where they did their farming.

RP: And you mentioned earlier that your father had this expertise in growing potatoes. Is that primarily what he grew at that time?

JN: In the beginning, yes, that was what he grew but then after a while he grew other things too.

RP: What else did he grow?

JN: Oh, he grew... afterwards, after that time he bought a place in Azusa, California, which is about twenty-five miles east of Los Angeles and so he grew a lot of things. He grew loganberries, boysenberries, he had... the farm was an orange grove so he grew oranges and then he grew cantaloupes, watermelons, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce. In southern California you grow four crops a year, you know, winter and summer. And in the spring we mainly grew strawberries 'cause you make more money on strawberries than potatoes, so that's basically what happened. But he grew everything, he grew everything.