<Begin Segment 7>

KL: You had connections to Manzanar before it was Manzanar War Relocation Center.

KP: Oh, yes, we did. You have probably heard that people would come up here and pick the fruit. Well, of course, we did, too. It was free fruit, so we would come up and pick apples and pears whenever we got a chance to pick some. And we'd also go, there was a farm, some farming south of Big Pine, and we would go up there and dig potatoes whenever we got a chance. And that was augmenting all of our food. Of course, as I said, my mother had always had a garden with garden vegetables, and we always had chickens.

KL: What did you grow at home?

KP: Corn, tomatoes, potatoes, okra. She liked okra. I never did. And then later on when they moved to the new house, she had asparagus, wonderful asparagus patch, and she had berries, I think, raspberries, and strawberries, (grape vines).

KL: What was the... you said there was a property south of Lone Pine where you'd dig potatoes.

KP: Big Pine.

KL: Oh, I'm sorry, okay.

KP: South of Big Pine. It was a big farming area at the time. Where they got the land or the water, I don't know, because the water was gone already to the aqueduct by then.

KL: Where they actively farming it and you guys were kind gleaning it?

KP: Yeah, we probably did the gleaning after they had dug most of 'em out of there, I'm not sure. But, of course, the aqueduct came in and all the water was gone. [Laughs]

KL: Your folks moved here, I think, right after a lot of the unrest in the '20s, right?

KP: Yeah.

KL: Did they ever talk about kind of what it was like to come into this area at that time?

KP: No. Of course, I never paid any attention to the loss of the water or anything, because I wasn't old enough to pay attention. That was something that I feel bad about that my classmate, Frank Gamboa, said that he knew that when the Manzanar, when everybody was coming to Manzanar, that he was out on Main Street and he saw the parade of the private cars as well as the buses on their way to Manzanar. He actually saw it, because he lived close to Main Street. But I didn't, and we lived right on the main drag by the airport. But I don't recall that at all.

KL: When you guys were picking the fruit at Manzanar, was anyone caring for any portion of those trees?

KP: It was pretty well abandoned that I recall at that time.

KL: Did you guys... I'm curious to know how --

KP: The fruit trees were beginning to get kind of raggedy because no one was really taking care of them.

KL: No one was pruning them.

KP: Yeah, they weren't pruning them back and all that. And a lot of the fruit wasn't good because it just was too old. And like I said, not watered properly and not taken care of. It was pretty sad.

KL: Did you have a particular place you would come?

KP: Well, I've been to the fruit orchards out here, and it was in a similar area where the blooming trees were over here on the north side, kind of on the north side.

KL: Would just your family come out?

KP: Yes.

KL: Did you encounter other people ever?

KP: It was sort of like the same thing, you get up and you get pinon nuts. That was fun.

KL: Where did you go for that?

KP: Up Hogback Creek and Tuttle Creek. Any place we could go to get 'em, usually Hogback because they were lot more accessible to the actual trees that bear, that have any fruit on them.

KL: And you said it was fun? What would you do?

KP: Well, we made my dad climb in the tree once in a while, but finally we realized you just have to shake the tree and put a tarp below it, and then you pick (them) up, and then you clean your hands to get all pitch off of it.

KL: Yeah, I've tried to process even the ones from the store with the hull, and it's kind of time-consuming.

KP: Oh, I like 'em raw, so I just get 'em and eat 'em raw. Lot of people heat 'em up a little bit and cook 'em. They come out of the shell a little easier.

KL: Did you use a nutcracker?

KP: No, just your teeth. [Laughs] One at a time. We didn't cook 'em, we didn't use 'em for cooking, we just ate 'em raw in those years for sure.

KL: When you'd be out at Manzanar picking, were there other people around?

KP: Sometimes, yeah. I never saw a lot of people there.

KL: It sounds like it was a really popular thing.

KP: Yeah, it was for a while there, before the fruit got too bad, or the trees died out.

KL: Do you recall people ever talking to you as a child about their feelings about the town of Manzanar's end, or was that really part of your thinking?

KP: No. As I said, my main impressions when I came here as a Camp Fire girl, that was my main impression.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.