Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Henry Nishi Interview I
Narrator: Henry Nishi
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Santa Monica, California
Date: January 8, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-nhenry_2-01-0018

<Begin Segment 18>

RP: I'd like to backtrack back to Davis.

HN: Yeah.

RP: And, did you live on campus, Henry? Or...

HN: Not right on campus, but right next to the campus. We lived in a private home. And a lot of people that lived there tried to make space for students because it was very... but there were dormitories at, on campus. One was the north dorm, the west dorm, and then there was a women's dormitory. There was three dormitories. But, if you wanted to live off campus in a private home, you had that choice. But there was very few people that actually went to school that were commuting from home because we were out in the boonies. Yeah, I had a friend that lived in Woodland, which is only about 10 miles away that, that lived at home and came to school. And I don't know of anybody that... if you lived in Sacramento, which was only 14 miles away, I'm sure there were students from Sacramento that would have commuted from... but even that 14 miles, it would be easier to live on campus if you could.

RP: Were you the only Japanese American at the school at that time?

HN: Yeah, at that time we had fifty, fifty Japanese Americans, mostly from the Fresno Valley. Mostly orchardists, farmers that were... it was citrus growers from Parlier. There was almond growers, peach growers... I don't know of anybody that was in the, in the grape industry, but UC Davis had a, had a department in wine grapes and grape, the grape industry. But peaches and pears and apricots and citrus, and besides, there was truck crops, too.

RP: Your summers, you came back down to Los Angeles?

HN: Yeah.

RP: And part of your summer was spent working at your father's nursery?

HN: Yeah.

RP: And what did you do for him during the summer?

HN: Well, mostly water plants in the summertime.

RP: Where, what was your water source for the, for the nursery, Henry?

HN: Because it was on government ground, we couldn't be serviced by city water, water and power, L.A. And I think Edison Company supplied, Edison, to that particular west L.A. area. In order to get electricity from Edison Company we had to put in our own, install our own pole and pay for the, pay for the electricity, pay for the installation of the electrical line, and of course they would put in a meter after. If you did that, of course, you owned all the equipment. But we had to have power for, we had to have a lot of power for running the pump for the water. Because we had, we had a, had our own well... there was an existing well out on the property, but there was no, no pump or we had to install, get a pump. We had to install the, a pressure tank so we had enough pressure to, to water the plants.

RP: And the area of the nursery that was devoted to field grown stock was flood irrigated?

HN: Yeah, it was irrigated. Yeah.

RP: Was anybody doing drip irrigation in those days or...

HN: No, no.

RP: Still too far away. Lots of water.

HN: No, no. But we did, Dad did use overhead, overhead irrigation a lot, too, other than... of course, you know, at that time, the only irrigation, overhead irrigation it was Rain Bird, which is, to this day is still famous. I think it's pretty recently that, maybe ten-twelve years ago that, that the Rain Bird, that that patent ran out. But that Rain Bird company had that exclusive patent for that particular, you know what I'm talking about? The Rain Bird...

RP: Oh, yes.

HN: Overhead irrigation...

RP: I worked with them for a long time.

HN: I think, they still, the orchards, they still use the Rain Bird...

RP: That sound, that sound.

HN: Yeah, yeah. Alfalfa fields, they still use it.

RP: Those impact sprinklers?

HN: Yeah.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.