<Begin Segment 6>

RP: So do you have any other very early memories of the strawberry farm in Gardena, Garden Grove?

MN: Not really. I remember I think one, one time my father was, oh, was taking us to school, grammar school, he, we got in an accident, he got in an accident. Not major but you know. I remember that. But other than that, no, nothing.

RP: Did you, did you play on the farm? Do you remember...

MN: Well, we used to, my father had a Model T. And my, sometime my older half-brother he knows how to operate it. So those days you got three pedals. And you start the thing by [inaudible]. So I missed all of that. So we used to when we had a chance we used to start it our self, crank it or you know, start it, see. And a lot of time we forget which pedal to hit so the thing keeps on going. And that happened to, we had a Moreland, a truck, farm truck to haul strawberries to the market. And one day we started that thing and good thing it was in a compound, the gear, it just crawls. Well, it got started and start crawling and we had a, there's a railroad track on top so there was a gulley. And once it start to go we couldn't stop it so it kept on going and it finally fell into the gulley and that's when it stopped. And about time Father got home, boy, we caught hell. Yeah.

RP: Kids will be kids.

MN: Yeah. And we used to, my father used to hunt, hunt in Japan. So he knows his rifles, his twenty-twos, his shotguns and stuff. And he those and we used to see a lot of doves and stuff on a line. So we used to shoot them with twenty-twos. Father kept the twenty-twos so we used to just grab it and shoot those doves.

RP: Did you do any fishing as a kid?

MN: No. We never had a chance. We didn't live near the river or anything.

RP: So where did your father take his, market his strawberries to?

MN: I think that's, at that time I don't know if there was a... well, probably they had a marketing in Orange County someplace, in Anaheim or someplace there but I don't remember that. The main one was in L.A. Seventh Street, a wholesale market there. But he didn't go, I don't think he went that far. He probably went to some place where, everything they more or less dump it. Probably in Anaheim or Orange County, there someplace.

RP: How was your father as a dad?

MN: Pardon?

RP: How was your father as a dad? What...

MN: Well, a lot of times he doesn't say much. But when you do something wrong or when you start doing things, something wrong in front of people or guests or something, you don't, they don't holler at you or scold you. They just look at you. You look at him. You know right away that that's a no-no. But that, that's the way samurais are. They don't say much but he's still got that trait.

RP: A look.

MN: Yeah.

RP: He's got the samurai look.

MN: Right. Yeah.

RP: Okay, huh.

MN: So all we do is just look at his eye to eye. I could tell right away. Yeah. So anyway, after the strawberry and all that... migrating worker, then finally he came back into L.A. and went into a gardening business. And that's when we came back from Japan, 1939.

RP: 1939?

MN: Yeah.

RP: And...

MN: Stayed there in downtown, I mean uptown L.A. they call it uwamachi. That means uptown, uptown district in Los Angeles.

RP: Okay, and...

MN: It's, now it's Korean town. That, that area.

RP: And what did you call it earlier, what?

MN: Oh.

RP: Uptown in Japanese?

MN: Yeah, uwamachi.

RP Wamachi?

MN: Uwa, ooh-ahh, ooh-ahh. uwa means up.

RP: Okay.

MN: Machi means...

RP: Town.

MN: Town, yeah.

RP: And so your dad starts gardening and you rented a home there.

MN: Yes, yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.