Densho Digital Archive - Henry Nishi Interview I (denshovh-nhenry

<Begin Segment 13>

RP: You had an opportunity to go to Davis.

HN: Yeah.

RP: And your parents were able to pay for your education?

HN: Yeah, I took up landscape design.

RP: And that was, you spent three years up there?

HN: Yeah.

RP: So you grew up, you grew up in kind of an urban area in Los Angeles and you went to Davis, kind of a rural area.

HN: Yeah, yeah.

RP: How did that work out?

HN: Well it, Davis was, was a real small town. Not much there except most of the people that lived in Davis were either connected to the university or they had businesses, grocery stores or, or pharmacy, drug stores, shops. It was a really small, very small city, 14 miles west of Sacramento, exactly 14 miles west of Sacramento.

RP: And how was the, how was the schooling there? The classes that you took...

HN: At that time it was, it was a real small school. And I think at the time when I was there from 1938, '39, and '40, I think UC Davis had, I think it was only about 1,500 students. But, it was, it was a nice school. I mean, it was, it was a, we had dormitories there. They had nice classrooms. But a lot, because it was an agricultural oriented school, we had a lot of acreage and vegetables, orchards, citrus... not citrus but the fruit, like apricots, peaches. And it was also poultry, animal husbandry, I think we had a pig farm. They bred horses there. I think we had, they had, I think we had some Arabian horses. And most of the Arabian horses were at Cal, in Pomona, university of, was that Cal-Poly? Yeah. But we did have some Arabian horses there at UC Davis.

RP: Before you went to college, during your high school years, were you growing any plants?

HN: Was I?

RP: At the nursery? Or propagating plants?

HN: You mean was I involved in doing that?

RP: Yeah.

HN: No, no.

RP: Not at all?

HN: I was too young to be...

RP: Who did the propagation at the nursery, or when you were growing like the kentia palms or would you get those in from a...

HN: I think they were all bought from a, actual growers.

RP: And you just...

HN: Yeah, 'cause my dad was primarily in the retail business and not in growing, growing for other nurseries. He probably grew a lot of stuff for his own use, but not in the scale where he'd be growing for other, other people. Because, in the nursery business, whether it was retail or... it was either retail or you're doing wholesale which is actually growing for the retail trade. So, my dad was primarily interested in the retail trade and not growing.

RP: So was the idea for you to go and get a more formal education in horticulture and come back and help run the nursery?

HN: Yeah, yeah.