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TI: Okay. So eventually, when you were around thirteen years old, thirteen, fourteen, your family moved from Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to California. Can you explain why your family moved to California?

AM: Yeah. My father, during one of his deliveries to, to the farmers, was caught in a blizzard. Stalled his car and all that, and he got quite sick from that, he caught pneumonia. Got stuck in the snow and whatever, and he caught pneumonia. Well, they treated the pneumonia, but even at that time, there was not a lot of medicine to help cure that. Eventually it turned into tuberculosis, and then he was unable to work. So my mom took over and doing the best she could, but as far as doing the ordering and trying to keep it up, she just couldn't do it. So push comes to shove, why, I guess my father's sister in California said to bring the family out. They lived in Teminus, California, which is twenty or thirty miles outside of Stockton, and they were farmers there. So we went over there, took a train ride, stopped at Salt Lake City, met some more friends and went on to California. My dad was still bedridden, my mother did the cooking for the farmworkers, and it was really something new for her to do. She just got shoved into it, and I know she had a really tough time. They had maybe ten workers there that she had to prepare breakfast and lunch and supper for, and I think she must have really had a tough time. Because it's just something that you just don't get into and cook for all those people and keep 'em happy and try to make a menu. And I know she had a tough time. Eventually we moved back into Stockton, and my dad still was unable to work. My sister was working someplace, my brother and myself and the rest of the kids were still in high school. We used to, I remember one year we went out to try to work on the farm doing planning and stuff like that, but it just didn't work out for us. But then the war broke out.

TI: Well, going back, when you say it didn't work out, so this was your, your father's sister's farm. Why wouldn't it work out? Was it because you didn't know how to farm, or what happened?

AM: Well, I think what happened was, was I think it really got down on my mom. She just had really a tough time trying to work out a menu, try to keep the workers happy with supper and this and that. And of course, you had different nationality, you don't know what to cook and this and that, you're not used to it. Now, if you worked, if you lived out there and was born out there, you knew what, what their fare was. But I think her coming in there and just cold turkey trying to figure that all out, and trying to change the menu and keep 'em happy, I think it overwhelmed her. Although I never heard that, but this is just my thoughts.

TI: And so when you went to Stockton, moved to Stockton, what did she do in Stockton?

AM: She worked in the packing shed with a bunch of ladies there told her that there was some work in the packing sheds packing broccoli, and that was the first time I ever ate broccoli in my life. [Laughs] But she used to bring home all the, all the trimmings and stuff, like she used to put it in a little bag and bring some broccoli home. And we had broccoli almost every night, but we learned to eat it, we learned to eat it and it was pretty good stuff. [Laughs]

TI: And so would you say your family was sort of struggling financially, or during this time period with your dad being sick?

AM: Yeah, I think we just scraped by. I don't think there was any money left over for hardly anything, you know. But my dad used to be in, he was bedridden, he always used to say, "Well, we're going to have a, we've always had a good, good Sunday dinner." We always had roast beef or something like that. He'd always say, "We're always going to have a good Sunday dinner."

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.