<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Let's see... so your parents also then got into farming in the Garden Grove area?

MN: Yeah, yeah. Father had a 40 acre strawberry farm. In, in Orange County. I think the place was called Garden Grove. And now it's Disneyland, yeah. But he had a 40 acre leased strawberry farm there. And in 1931 that, the Long Beach earthquake, then the Depression. And, you know, he had to just... bankrupt. But I remember the earthquake. I never forget that earthquake even though I was about five, five or six years old.

RP: So what do you remember about it?

MN: Our whole three-bedroom, four-bedroom house... see, when you build a house when you're a farmer, you go different places farming. So you never put a house on a solid foundation. It's on a stilt. You know, about maybe two-foot, three-foot, your house on a stilt. Well, when the earthquake came I remember the house that was on a stilt, it shifted back ten feet off the stilt, I remember. Then you look at the strawberry farm, the field, it's like an ocean wave. I remember that. Then for your irrigation for the strawberry, they had a big concrete pipe going to about maybe seven or eight feet. That's where the water comes out, see. And that busted so the water was shootin' up and everything. But I never forget that and we wouldn't go back in the house to sleep because the aftershock and all that. So we just get our blanket and mattress and just laid out in the open and go to sleep that night. And even when you're sleeping that thing, you could feel the after shake, after shock.

RP: So were you in the house when the quake hit?

MN: Yeah, yeah. But we got out before it shifted. Yeah, but when, when you're standing on the ground and when see your earth, earth just rolling it's a hell of a feeling. Then on top of that I think my father and, had a crew that harvested strawberries. I think about ten or fifteen people -- my half-sister and my mom used to cook you know for supper and all that -- so just when they're ready to sit down for the dinner, about five, five-thirty, that's when it, the earthquake struck. So that part I remember really well.

RP: You don't forget those things.

MN: Yeah.

RP: Geez, wow. Now, did your, you said that your father came from a sort of a samurai background.

MN: Yes.

RP: So he hadn't had any previous farming, farming experience, had he?

MN: No. He, he came over to the United States under ag. Ag, what do they call it, visa.

RP: Right. Laborer...

MN: Yeah, he came as an ag visa. So strawberry, you know strawberry, that went bad. So after that he just worked on a farm as a laborer around Orange County.

RP: And he went up as far as, into Ventura, San Fernando Valley.

MN: Yeah. See when, when we were in Japan, sent to Japan, migrating workers, you know, vegetable, from yeah, San Fernando Valley all the way up to Oxnard, Ventura, Oceano, Pismo Beach, out there. So they had all the fresh farm, vegetable farm. So they had to harvest. So if one gets through you go to another place. It's all along the coast, up and down.

RP: You talked about this group of workers that come in to harvest the strawberries.

MN: Uh-huh.

RP: Were they, what ethnicity were they?

MN: They were Latin, Spanish.

RP: Spanish?

MN: Yeah. Latinos.

RP: Latinos.

MN: Yeah, yeah. That's why a lot of time we have our Japanese bento, you know, Mom makes it, you know. And the Latinos have tortilla and beans. And we loved that stuff when we were kids. So we used to exchange. Yeah.

RP: Something different.

MN: Yeah, yeah. I never forget that, tortilla and beans.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.