Densho Digital Archive - Rose Tanaka Interview (denshovh-trose

<Begin Segment 8>

AL: What was your family raising on the farm?

RT: Well, my father became best known for lettuce, head lettuce, in Cayucos. The Morro Bay property, we raised beans that could be harvested for dry beans. But that didn't take this much attention as the lettuce did.

AL: So you said he was known for lettuce. Was he like the lettuce king of Cayucos? [Laughs]

RT: No, he wasn't the lettuce king, but he was very attentive with plowing and having the fields tended to, and taking out the weeds and that kind of thing. He was very meticulous in what he did.

AL: And how did he sell his lettuce? Was he a truck farmer?

RT: He was a truck farmer. In the early days... he, well, when the lettuce was ready for harvest, then it became very busy because everybody had to go out, cut the lettuce, crate them, and pack the crates on trucks. And he, at first, I think he had truckers come and truck them in, and he was able to earn enough with proceeds to buy a truck. And my brothers were growing older, so they would load up the truck with the lettuce, crates of lettuce, and then he would drive it two hundred miles down to market in Los Angeles and sell the lettuce. And then he'd come back, and just kept, until the harvest was completed, and then it was his job to make sure that the fields were plowed under and prepared for the next crop. The thing about California is that the weather was so mild where we lived, it never froze, it never got up above eighty-five, and so it was year-round farming. So I don't know whether it was two or three crops a year that he was able to get from that one piece of property. So it was a continuous job for him. And at first he had a couple of horses that he used for plowing the fields. And then later on, it was much later on he was able to get some farming equipment . So in the home we lived in, there was a hill behind us, and there were two horses that lived there. And they were the work horses, and when you had plowing to do in Morro Bay, he would climb on the cart afterwards, and the two horses would pull him, and they would go to Morro Bay and work the property over there. So he had a hard life; he worked continuously.

AL: So he had both of those farms at the same time?

RT: Yes. But as I said, the bean farming was a little less demanding. And he actually had some workers who lived in the farm property in Morro Bay, so they were good workers, and they also were able to live there. So he did have help, hired help.

AL: Were these Japanese workers?

RT: No. It seems to me they were mostly of Filipino descent.