<Begin Segment 17>

KL: But you were ready to go back to California?

RF: Pardon?

KL: When you finished with the army, though, you were ready to go back to California?

RF: Yeah, yeah. The opportunity was there, so, yeah.

KL: How was that return?

RF: Well, I wanted to come back to Sawtelle. And my friend Min Takimoto's mother had a boarding house there, a block away from Mary's church. And so she said I could stay there while I went to school, I found my career. So I stayed there at the boarding house and went to USC. And wherever I could do gardening I was, had my own gardening route, and that was my income.

Off camera voice: You were the only student with a lawnmower sticking out the back --

RF: [Laughs] Well, I had to work between classes, so I had a Ford coupe which had a deep trunk, but not long enough to hide a whole lawnmower, so the lawnmower handle would stick out the back, and I couldn't take, get rid of my tools and leave them, so they were always with me. So I'd park at the USC parking lot, and Mary says I was the only, had the only car with a lawnmower handle sticking out the back.

KL: Makes it easy to find, right, when you were leaving class?

RF: Yeah.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.