Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Bob Fuchigami Interview
Narrator: Bob Fuchigami
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-fbob-01-0003

<Begin Segment 3>

RP: I, you mentioned that your father formed a corporation with other, with other Isseis?

BF: Yes. There were, oh... I think there were seven, eight others.

RP: And this was a, a way of circumventing the --

BF: Ownership problem, yeah.

RP: -- alien land laws?

BF: Yeah.

RP: Created an obstacle for Issei land ownership. That was a strong action to take.

BF: It's survival.

RP: Right. It's also a feeling that, "I want to be here."

BF: Yeah.

RP: Do you have any other additional recollections about your dad you can share with us? What are your most vivid memories of him as a man, as a father, as a provider?

BF: Well, I know he helped start a language school in Marysville. He was, I guess, like a treasurer for the association. He certainly was hard-working, and to raise eight children during the middle of a depression, that says something about the character of the man. As a farmer, he learned farming from a Chinese man. He, his first attempt at farming was to plant tobacco in California. It was a failure because there's no real market, you know, for processing and selling. So the next year he was going to try something else and, and there was a farmer down the road about less than a mile, I guess, and he'd walk down there at probably four in the morning and watch this Chinese farmer plant different kinds of vegetables and then he'd go home and, and imitate or replicate what that, what that farmer was doing. And that's how he learned to raise crops. Otherwise, I think he would have just given up and I don't know what he would have done then. But there's five, five acres that he leased and...

RP: It was mostly growing like truck crops on...

BF: Yeah, it was, yeah...

RP ... vegetables primarily.

BF: Tomatoes, squash, and you know, cucumbers and so forth. We lived near a, a river with a levee and so we had a lot of, so-called, hobos in those days who would be wandering around. They'd be making their, their stews and stuff and they needed vegetables and they'd come down. And I guess my dad just, you know, just gave them extra vegetables for their stews. Never charged or anything. I think they, they sort of put a mark on, on the property so they could help other hobos. Come and say, "This fellow's a generous man." So my dad was a, was a good man. Worked hard from sunrise to sunset and after. So he must have put in at least sixteen, eighteen hours a day. And my mom was, was just as hardworking. I mean, she raised the kids, cooked in the house, cleaned the house, and so forth. Then, and then went out in the fields and helped Dad.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.