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KL: I wanted to ask, you mentioned your father's brother would go gambling with him. When did your father's brother come?

KM: They came together, I think.

KL: What was his name, your uncle?

KM: Ojichan?

YI: No, that means "uncle."

KM: Just "uncle."

YI: That's not his name. I think it's in the book here.

KM: His cousins called him Kumaoji, "Uncle Bear."

YI: No, but it's in here, it's in the book. Maybe we'll have to do the research.

KM: He was, he liked how the wealthy lived.

KL: Your uncle did?

KM: He knew Patek Philippe was a good watch, and good clothing. Because the man that he was the valet for was small, and so he would give my uncle castoffs. He had a tuxedo, white... was it morning coat, Sylvia? When the tuxedo is the white jacket and the tails.

KL: What occasions did he wear it for?

KM: Probably crashing parties.

Off camera: Morning coat is different. It has striped pants and a rounded back.

YI: Can I say something?

KL: Uh-huh, yeah.

YI: We benefited from my uncle's love of expensive clothing, because he would have cashmere sport coats made. And there would be just enough for us to get a skirt out of it because we were small and it would take less than a yard, you know, two of us would be less than a yard, practically, to wear a skirt. In those days it was a pencil thin skirt, straight skirt, so all he did was put a zipper and a band on it, and my mother would do that. So we always had nice, no tops, but nice cashmere skirts.

KL: Is this the same uncle that your father was in business with?

YI: Right.

KL: How did they... so they were in San Francisco, but then where did they go from there?

KM: They moved down south. I remember my uncle, father's... another brother, who did work in Santa Maria in the farms around there. And then that uncle went back to Japan carting an Indian motorcycle that he loved, took it back to Japan, and he also took back a 1926 Chevy truck, because they were going to do truck farming like they do in the United States, but they just were not able to pull it off.

KL: Was that a third brother?

KM: Yes. So he came, I think, after my dad did, because there was a cousin that went, too, that came. And he was married, and he worked the farms and then went back to Japan after the war. Because he lived with us for a while after the war.

KL: Where from Santa Maria did he go?

KM: He moved down to, I guess, Oxnard area or somewhere, and then they went to L.A., and then got money somehow, working, I guess. He worked at the farms in the Ojai area and came south. So then he bought, or leased land to work in the L.A. area.

KL: Where was that land?

KM: Culver City, Mar Vista area, and he had... I remember he had hothouses, and he grew lilies, Easter lilies, he grew cucumbers. Because I remember the Easter lilies had pollen in their stem, pistol or whatever you call that part, and you had to pull it out without spilling the yellow pollen on the leaf of the flower.

KL: Did you help with that?

KM: Yeah, I was about four years old.

KL: What do you remember of the... did he sell them then?

KM: To wholesalers, the flowers.

KL: What was his workshop like, or the greenhouse where you would do the work?

KM: Just greenhouses with benches on stilts, and you could... it was up above so you wouldn't get soggy plants, good drainage. Then I guess he did that, and then he eventually went into commercial celery raising, and raised celery, and he did a really good year during pre-World War II, and he cultivated the celery and then World War II came and ruined it all.

KL: Did he still grow flowers while he was growing celery?

KM: I don't recall if he did that or not, because celery took a lot of your time. And their neighbor was the Nishi family, and they did that, too, grew celery, and I think they grew...

YI: They did the gardenias.

KM: Gardenias.

KL: Where was the crop, where did they grow the celery?

KM: In Mar Vista and Venice area, Grandview and Centinela, that area. That's where they were, raised their children.

KL: Where did they live?

KM: They lived on the property.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.