Densho Digital Archive - George Uchida - Leo Uchida Interview (denshovh-ugeorge

<Begin Segment 21>

RP: You graduated, the last class, in 1945. Do you remember much about your graduation?

LU: No. I think, I know we had a cap and gown, and went through the procession and all that. The one thing I remember was before the graduation, this was about a month before, I got a draft notice, you know. And so I think there were six of us got the notice, so the principal found out about it, so he told us that, he said he's gonna try to get a deferment, 'cause we only got about a month to go to graduate. So finally, he said, he said he tried, but he couldn't get the deferment. So we have to go. So day before we were supposed to go, the, I remember my class, they put on a little dancing party. And then my social studies class, the teacher made all the other student write a, some kind of goodbye letter to me. And all that happened, and then, that night around suppertime, we found out the deferment came through. [Laughs] So the next day I said, "Oh, I got to go back to school again." But anyway, had to, I had to check all the books out, so I got to check all the books back in, so I had to go back to school again.

GU: By that time, the family was in Maryland, right? You and somebody stayed behind.

LU: Yeah. Just my next sister, May, she stayed with me until I finished, graduated.

RP: And the rest of the family had resettled.

GU: Yeah, they have already gone to Maryland.

RP: And what kind of arrangements did they make to go to Maryland?

LU: Okay. Before that, before they went to Maryland, my dad and Daniel, they went to, they went to Seabrook to work. And you know, over there they have housing and all that. Well, working there, I guess my dad always wanted to go back into farming. And somehow, he got in contact with this one big German farmer, his name was Heine.

GU: He's a gentleman farmer, he's not a farmer himself. He just owned big farms.

LU: Big estate, big farm. And so he agreed to let Dad do sharecropping. And agreed to that, so, and they finally moved over there, moved to the farm. 'Cause this farm is such a big, that they had one... at least four different homes on this farm. And the biggest home with electricity, the foreman lived over there. But the other three homes, they had no electricity.

GU: No running water.

LU: Yeah. So we lived in one home, and then this other Japanese family lived in another home. And then this one colored family lived on this other house. And... let's see, what's, what was the question?

RP: So that was the arrangement.

LU: Yeah. Okay, so this sharecropping, this farmer, he allowed my dad, I think, one acre? Or two or three acres of tomatoes. You know, tomatoes, I guess, once you plant it, you don't need much work, I guess. Seemed like all they do was work for the owner doing other -- 'cause he had cattles, and he raised potatoes and other crops. So we were always working over there, and I think... how much did he pay us? Twenty dollars a week or something. So there were my dad, Daniel, David, and then I worked sometimes, too, when I was there. And then May worked as a maid for the farmer that lived, the foreman that lived on the... and George and Eileen was still going to school. Yeah, I think the foreman we worked for twenty dollars a week or something, until I got drafted. And I don't know, tomato, if he made any money from the tomato or not. So it wasn't such a good deal. So after, I think, my dad lived there for about two years, and then he started to get out of there, so moved to L.A.

GU: No, we lived there only one year.

LU: Huh?

GU: Only one year.

LU: One year? I think before then, my older brother Elmer, he lived there for maybe one or two months, then he came back to L.A. Because his wife and the family, Nishis, already did this. So Elmer came back here and he got into gardening. And once he sees everything, how he could work out, he, the whole family moved, and then everybody went into gardening.

RP: Mr. Nishi gave him work?

LU: Huh? Yeah, yeah, I guess at the beginning, he would get a landscaping job, and then everybody would pitch in.

RP: So it gave, it gave you little bit of an economic foundation to kind of get going again.

GU: Yeah, he kind of, Mr. Nishi kind of helped us get started in the gardening business.

RP: So you worked on the weekends?

LU: Yeah, well, I... when they moved, I was in the service, so I didn't know, I wasn't involved in the moving. So when I got out of the service, they were already moved to L.A.