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KL: And aside from growing things, what can you tell us about your grandparents' lives? Like what were their interests, what were their values that you remember?

KN: Well, it turns out that my grandfather was very community-oriented. So he organized... he had great foresight actually, tremendous foresight, he was a pretty bright guy. And he started the Japanese community center in Pasadena, and had enough foresight, he bought land for that place, and he built on it.

KL: Was this you maternal or your paternal grandfather?

KN: That's my maternal grandfather. And, of course, he built a large nursery, but besides that, I'm pretty sure he's the founder of the Southern California Gardeners Association. My grandmother used to go to every one of those annual meetings and dinners after he passed away. He also started a credit union.

KL: Were the credit unions and the growers association intercultural, or was it all Japanese immigrants?

KN: All Japanese. Because Japanese couldn't borrow money. And the other thing he did was, there was a big move on by, I think, it was the AFL or CIO, to organize the gardeners. They thought it was going to be a cinch. And it turned out that my grandfather was a gardener, and the association strategy... and of course the unions were stunned at that time, you could read the stories on it. They were stunned that they got voted down. So the gardeners never got organized.

KL: Was that in the 1930s? I don't know anything about that.

KN: No, that was in the '50s after the war.

KL: I see.

KN: The things I'm talking about are after the war.

KL: Oh, the credit unions and the growers association?

KN: The community center was before the war, but the gardeners association, credit union, was after the war.

KL: I see.

KN: So anyway, he had a pretty good strategic mind, I remember. That was my grandfather.

KL: What was his wife like?

KN: My grandmother? She's the one that raised myself and Gary Hata. Gary Hata's father also worked on guayule, his name is Tomoichi. I think Frank Kageyama's stories refer to him as "Green Thumbs." Gary and I never heard of that. Nobody ever, we never called him Green Thumbs. Maybe that's what Frank called him. Because Mr. and Mrs. Hata worked for my grandfather, Fuji Nursery, that's where they learned horticulture.

KL: Were they immigrants also?

KN: Yes. Mr. Hata is... I think you should talk to his son Gary, I could tell you a couple of... because I was very close to Mr. Hata, he was like an uncle to me. And my grandmother, he'd be really puzzled on Veterans Day, because Mr. Hata served in the United States army, very proud of it, and when they had the parade, he always wears his uniform and went downtown, marched. So he was a veteran of the First World War, and that's how he got his citizenship.

KL: That's interesting.

KN: Another thing, then, Mr. Hata used to laugh all the time after I was grown up, is apparently when I was young, he said, what does my mother call me, he asked me. I said, "Urusai." Urusai means "you're noisy." [Laughs] That's what he used to tell me. "Your mom used to call you urusai." So he was a very close member affiliated with the Nishimura family.

KL: Yeah. And you said your grandmother was the one who did a lot of the raising for you?

KN: Yeah, he raised both Gary Hata and his son. As a matter of fact, when my grandmother passed away, Gary missed her more than I did. So that's how close Gary is.

KL: Are there other things you wanted to tell us or could tell us about your paternal grandparents how, other than growing things, what they were like?

KN: Well, I didn't know them very well, like I said. All I remember was I know I went to visit them one time and he was on the floor. He had a crutch next to him, and he had a cast on his leg, looked like he broke his leg. That's what I remember. So we went to visit him just because he broke his leg. But other than that, they lived in Gardena, and before the Second World War, Gardena was a long ways off from Pasadena. There were no freeways, there were no Pasadena freeway, no Harbor freeways. So very difficult to get down there.

KL: How did your folks meet?

KN: I think there was an arranged marriage just like everybody else in those days.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.