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

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Now, you were about two or three years old when your parents left that nursery on Wilshire and moved to another location?

HN: Yeah, yeah.

RP: Where was that?

HN: Where was that?

RP: The second shop.

HN: Western Avenue. Western Avenue...

RP: Beverly?

HN: And Beverly Boulevard.

RP: And was that, was that already a nursery that they just bought or did they establish it from the ground up?

HN: No, no, it, it was bare ground that he actually rented the, or leased the property, built, built the building, the flower shop. He built a greenhouse and a lath house, shade, and he built a small house in the rear for, for living quarters.

Off-camera voice: Was that the property that had been lemon trees?

HN: I'm sorry, I didn't hear...

Off-camera voice: Was that the property that had been lemon trees?

HN: No, that, that was later on. That was when we moved to West L.A.

RP: That was the west one. This was the property that eventually was, the Ambassador Hotel was built on.

HN: No, that was the very first, before... when he started business, we were not born yet. We were born there at, at that first location on Wilshire Avenue.

RP: That was the...

HN: That's where the Ambassador hotel was, yeah.

RP: Now, did --

HN: And then, we went, then from, I guess it was two... we lost that, Dad lost that property because the Ambassador Hotel was going to be built. So we had to relocate to the other place which was on Western Avenue.

RP: And you started that from the ground up.

HN: From the ground up, yeah.

RP: What do you remember about the nursery and the floral shop?

HN: Well, the first location, I don't remember anything because I was born there and, and I think we moved there when I was two or three years old. But we, we grew up in the Western Avenue location which, from elementary school to high school, so we had lot of fun there. I had a lot of friends, neighborhood and school friends.

RP: Yeah, you said, you said that you used to, you used to drag race Model Ts?

HN: [Laughs] That's how we... teenagers.

RP: What did you do for fun as a, as a kid, before you became a teenager?

HN: Oh, we, it was mostly, in those days, it was pretty, like just hanging around the neighborhood. Summertime we used to just, we used to play games, shoot marbles. We used to go, summertime, we used to go around looking for apricot trees in the backyard, stealing apricots. [Laughs]