Densho Digital Archive - Ted Hamachi Interview (denshovh-hted-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: You talked about this mudslide that impacted your father's farm in 1933 and as a result of that you were forced to move? Where did the family next settle?

TH: We moved to Oxnard. Another family wanted to go on a joint venture so they talked it over and they tried to grow Chinese peas, the pea pod. They said Oxnard would be a good area and so we went to Oxnard.

RP: And how did that work out?

TH: Not too well. Anytime you do anything in a partnership, usually the partnership gets involved. Not too good, it's better to do everything on your own if you can.

RP: How long were you there?

TH: I believe something like one year and because of the failure to make it, we moved from Oxnard to Venice, California. At that time, my mom and dad worked as day laborers, you know, so much an hour. I think it was something like a hundred dollars a month or some equivalent to salary. At that time, we moved to Venice, my mother also had to do the cooking for the owner because I think the owner's, Japanese owner's wife, had passed away and so there was no one to cook.

RP: And you lived on that particular farm?

TH: Uh-huh.

RP: Who was the owner that you mentioned? Do you know his name?

TH: I believe the name was Sato, I don't know what first name they went by but that lasted only about a year also. So '34 we moved to Oxnard, and '35 we moved to Venice, and in '36 we moved to West Covina. This was just only three years or so, two or three years, we came back to farming on our own again.

RP: In an area that was fairly close to the original farm?

TH: Uh-huh. West Covina and... we were about eight miles east of where we were.

RP: And your father was able to reestablish himself.

TH: Uh-huh, well, the family grew up so he had more helping hands. It was a family enterprise then and then when we did need help to plant cauliflower, it was an early morning thing, the neighbors came to help. When they needed help, we exchange out that way.

RP: That's interesting. You kind of worked an exchange, was bartering an important part of farm life as well?

TH: Yes, it was. If you couldn't depend on your neighbors and you were a loner, then you worked all day. I remember some people being loners. They didn't want to participate or what, I don't know, but maybe they had no friends. But that's what friends are for is to help each other out, right? That's what happened to a lot of... it happened after World War II, we did the same thing, we helped each other out.

RP: Cooperation?

TH: Uh-huh.

RP: How about bartering of produce, "I'll give you 200 eggs for a couple crates of cantaloupes?"

TH: Uh-huh, that happened also. I remember the guy that shoed your horse, he'd come around, farm horses didn't have shoes on but they had to have their hoofs trimmed. You looked behind his back of his rumble seat, or behind his trunk, it's loaded with produce. But the hoof trimming wasn't that expensive, it was something like he would charge maybe, at the most, four or five dollars. The farmer usually had that kind of money but I think when he was short a little bit, he would extra produce in. Then that would be good for the horse shoer because he could trade that for eggs or something. So it was a bartering system was still prevalent years ago in the farm community.