<Begin Segment 5>

KL: You said your grandfather acquired that land initially through homesteading.

HK: Right.

KL: Was he able to prove out on it? Did the family end up owning that land, then? What happened to the land after his death?

HK: Well, that's the thing, is that his sister married and then had three sons, and I think it was put into the names of her three sons.

KL: Because she was, she and her, was her husband Japanese citizenship?

HK: Yes.

KL: Okay.

HK: But I think they were a little more aware of the laws and so forth, and so I think... this happened, of course, when my father was very young, and so we're not sure exactly what happened. But anyway, my father, and my uncle didn't receive any of that property, that I know of. Unless they paid him off for it or what. We don't know. But all I know is that my parents struggled financially all their life.

KL: And your father was working his father's property, right, when he was a teenager?

HK: Right, yeah.

KL: That forty-five acres.

HK: Right.

KL: Did they hire help? Or was it strictly family, do you know?

HK: I'm not sure about that, because his sister had three boys. Of course they were all younger than my father, so my father was the oldest among the boys, so he had to work the hardest. But I'm not sure if they hired other people or not. My grandmother didn't mention any of that in her history. But I think it was mainly family working the farm.

KL: Where was the property?

HK: The property is located in Loomis, California, in Placer County. It's in the foothills northeast of Sacramento. It's a beautiful area, and there was a lot of rocks and things like that, so all the land had to be cleared of the rocks before they could grow fruit trees. And then the weather was unpredictable in that area, because sometimes they would get even snow or frost when the fruit trees were blossoming, which was not very good for having a crop. So sometimes they had good crops, and some years they had very poor crops. So it's very unpredictable in that area. In fact, I don't think anyone has, there are very few people that have continued trying to grow fruit in that area, because of the inclement weather. That's why I think Fresno is more suited for growing peaches, (plums, pears and) apricots. So most of the people that their parents had started farming, all went to work in other areas, or for other companies, because it was hard to make a living just raising fruit.

KL: Would you, you've told us a little bit, I mean, I have kind of a sense of your father already from what you've said about his support of his brother, but would you tell us some sort of defining personality traits of his? What was he like? What was important to him?

HK: Well, he was just a very hardworking man. He didn't talk that much, so he wasn't that verbal. But he had a good sense of humor. Like he used to tell this story when people would complain about the drought year -- "Oh, California is in a drought" -- and so he was saying, "You know what they should do? They should have the whales pull the icebergs down from Alaska to help the drought situation in California." [Laughs] That was one of his stories he liked to tell people.

KL: I wonder if that's come up in the legislature these last couple months, as a possibility. [Laughs]

HK: But he was very advanced in his thinking, like he said that we shouldn't depend on oil from other countries to run our cars because you could use alcohol, which could be made from vegetable, like corn and so forth. And so he believed that our country would save a lot of money if they didn't depend on oil from other countries but just used their vegetables for oil. And so, even one time, he ran out of gas, so he used rubbing alcohol to run his car.

KL: So he was mechanical too. I guess you had to be.

HK: Yes, oh yes. He kept all the cars and tractors and everything running. He was very mechanical, so he fixed everything himself. He'd do all the plumbing. He did all the, as I said, all the hard work.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.