<Begin Segment 23>

KL: How long were you in the Westview Church?

MM: Well, altogether we were in Watsonville one year, the school year. And then -- I was in the eighth grade, and I finished the eighth grade, so that was one school year we finished. Then we moved to San Jose, and my mother found an old abandoned house on Gish Road. I'll never forget it, it was so awful. But what are you going to do? You just have to take it.

KL: What made it so awful?

MM: It was smelly and old and dirty, and it was just awful.

KL: Were there other neighbors?

MM: No, I don't think so. You mean immediate neighbors? No. It was abandoned, abandoned house.

KL: So she didn't lease it or anything. You moved in and...

MM: No, no, she had to rent it from the person who owned that property.

KL: How long were you there?

MM: Not very long, but we moved into a shed the next, apricot shed with no walls, so we used the trays as walls all the way around the building, and my mother cooked outside on a fire. So that was temporary.

KL: That was in San Jose also?

MM: Yeah.

KL: Where was that? Do you remember the street or anything?

MM: White Road. I think it was White Road. The first one was Gish Road. Yeah, and the third place, my mother found this ranch house, Mrs. Giannada, a widow lady, with Johnny and, Johnny and... there was a daughter. What was her name? Johnny and... it was an Italian name. I can't remember now. (Narr. note: Carmella.)

KL: Your mom had a lot of responsibility -- I mean, this is stating the obvious, but not only did she, was she a mother to all these kids, but she also was the English-speaking adult.

MM: Yeah, who more or less had to take charge of the business affairs of family.

KL: How did she, was that a new situation for her?

MM: No. By now, my mother was pretty smart. She, if she hired a man to fix something, she studied what she did and she never had to call another one again because she knew how to do it. My mother just learned from watching. She would watch how they do things and then never have to call a repairman again for that, so she was pretty smart that way.

KL: You were saying the third place was Mrs. Giannada?

MM: Giannada.

KL: Giannada. How long do you think those three places combined you were? It was '46 or so when you moved to Gish Road.

MM: Well, in nineteen, past '60, so 1961 I think.

KL: They were at Mrs. Giannada's place until '61?

MM: Yeah. See, because my brother Bobby was killed in an auto accident and he had insurance, left whatever, if something happened to him, the insurance money was to go to my mother, so my mother was able to put a down payment on a house. Until then she was just not able to accumulate enough money, because in the wintertime there's no job, so whatever they earn in the summertime, she had to stash it away in order to pay rent and food for the family. So I said to my mother, "I'll be a live-in maid so that you have one less mouth to feed and one less body to house." So during the school year I lived in people's homes and I worked for my keep, and that's the way we did it. Then summertime, I would come home and work in the fields with them, with my father, and so that's how we got along.

KL: So your parents were still doing farm work, and you too.

MM: Yeah.

KL: This was all in San Jose, right?

MM: All in San Jose.

KL: Until the 1960s. Did they always work on the same operation?

MM: Well, my mother eventually got a job in a frozen food company, like Birdseye or something like that.

KL: In San Jose?

MM: In San Jose, and she liked the job. And my father always worked on the farm. My father does not like to be indoors, like doing janitor's job or something like that. My father likes the outdoors. He wanted to be outdoors, so naturally that put him on the farm. And he worked for Mr. Paoletti and he worked for Mr. Imwali in the wintertime. In the wintertime he pruned fruit trees. There was apricots, pears, probably peaches.

KL: How long did he do that work?

MM: My father?

KL: Through the '60s and into the...

MM: Yeah, my father died in 1975, of a heart attack. He just died in his sleep. His heart just gave way, and he died at seventy-five -- in 1975.

KL: And was he still working before he died?

MM: Oh yeah.

KL: Did he, I don't know the story in San Jose area, was there much unrest like there was further south in the Central Valley, due to labor conditions? There was a lot of labor organizing and union organizing and advocacy, and did any of that touch his work, from about '65 to '75?

MM: Uh-uh.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.