<Begin Segment 4>

KP: So it sounds like your life was mostly work at the, on the farm, and school.

TT: Oh, yeah. Because before school and after school, if you didn't come home to get ready for next day market, and then we'd do our homework. Saturday, we would go to the market. Usually Saturday, Saturday afternoon, we got about a half a day off. Sunday we had to get ready for the Monday market. But it's not bad.

KP: And you were growing, you said, strawberries? What else?

TT: We had a truck farm that we used to raise tomato, pepper, cucumber and things like that, vegetables. We didn't have just one crop. We had a little strawberries, little bit of everything.

KP: So what was, what was the town, the big town that you went into?

TT: Oak Park, Thirty-fourth and, I think right now it's Thirty-fourth and Broadway. There used to be a market there. Right up the road from that Sacramento High School. Stanford junior high school burned down, that was on Sacramento Boulevard, and, I think it was Twelfth Avenue or someplace, that burned down. That was a nice school, brick building.

KP: So any other stories from your childhood working on the farm?

TT: Oh, yeah.

KP: What stands out in your mind?

TT: As soon as I was old enough to work, I had to work, you know. Pick tomatoes or thin sugar beets or whatever, oh, yeah. Plant, plant tomatoes, peppers.

KP: Did all your siblings work as well?

TT: Oh, yeah. Oh, my brothers, we all work in one farm, you know. We had ten acres, berries and all that, so blackberries, raspberries, strawberries.

KP: And all of this produce was taken to markets?

TT: Yeah.

KP: Did you ever go into town to help deliver the produce?

TT: No. Oh, yeah, in the morning, yeah. We'd deliver to a produce market. But almost every morning we'd get up about six o'clock and take it, come back until we can go to school.

KP: How far away from your house was the grammar school?

TT: Oh, that was about walking distance. Well, you figure Forty-fourth Street and Twenty-third Avenue, it's maybe three or four blocks. See, that used to be all open land, 'cause we used to cut through the neighbor's field. Can't do that now, but...

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.