<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Where did the, you said that the farm produced eggs as well as fryers, where were those marketed to?

OM: Well, we had people come in, you know, wholesalers? They would come and buy the eggs, almost daily and then, but we had a kind of retail, I guess, word of mouth gets around that if you want fresh eggs, go up there, whatever. So she had that going, that was her living money, more or less, just keep us going. But the bulk of the thing was through wholesalers. And then chickens, or fryers, for example, it's not a thing that you parcel out piecemeal, you buy a thousand chickens, or fryers, when they're little chicks and then you grow 'em up. And then once they get more or less ripe, age wise, you sell it all off. So it's kind of a... let's say if it takes ninety days to get 'em to a two pound whatever, that's the goal you have, ninety days from now you sell it all. It's just a matter of keeping them healthy, well fed, no problems. Then you can sell it and that's what she used to do. She was good at that, raising them from a little chicks, to prime size or whatever criteria that they were using. And then like egg laying hens, that was a little bit more... you had to do certain things like in the wintertime when the daylight gets shorter, you want them to produce more, so they'd have a automatic system of lighting that it would keeps the lights on and the chickens think, oh, it's still daylight so they can exercise or eat or whatever and lay more eggs, things like that. She learned all that, she didn't have any idea what was... I can imagine she came here around 1922 or something like that, and she started the business in 1928, that's only six years. And to take on that kind of responsibility, I give her a lot of credit, it's a tough job to learn all that particularly. But she kind of instinctively knew that just keeping a baby chick hot, warm, that isn't the answer, like my dad. He thought, oh , it's cold, he'd sleep in there even, in the brooder. But they died off, a lot of them, because it was too hot or whatever. So she had a kind of a knack for that.

RP: Where did you get your water for the farm?

OM: Well, we had it piped in. I can still remember from down the hill we had kind of a four inch pipe that came up the hill, you know, and that's where the water came from. It was city water, very expensive, we didn't have any pump or anything like that.

RP: You lived not too far from the ocean, in Wilmington.

OM: Well, no, the ocean wasn't there, the harbor was there. I don't know if you're familiar with the area but between Wilmington and San Pedro there's a kind of... on the one side was, there was a lumber yard. I can still remember EK Lumber was there and then in front of that was, next to that was Associated Gas, Flying A Gas, there's no more now but they used to be a kind of loading platform for, I guess, gas or petroleum products that they put on ships that was there. And then on the other side of the kind of an inlet there, there was a dry dock place and then across this waterway was a Kaiser Ship Building, you know, so it was kind of a strategic area for during the war. So when the war broke out, they didn't want you around. In fact right next to our farm was Union Oil 76 refinery. In fact I'll tell you a story. When the war broke out, like I said, we had no radio or anything like that, it was Sunday and we were out there weeding. And there's a chain link fence right next to our property where we were farming and I see a GI with a rifle marching now. He wasn't there yesterday, the day before, he was there today. He's the one that said, "Hey, by the way, we had an attack on Pearl Harbor." That's how I found out the war started, see, from a GI, you know.

RP: He wasn't there yesterday.

OM: He wasn't there the day before, you know, this was Sunday, Sunday afternoon. They were already there patrolling.

RP: Did you spread the word to your parents?

OM: Yeah, I wasn't in any hurry, I mean, the war started, it had no impact on us so I probably told 'em, you know, at dinner or whatever. Because, you know, we didn't do anything different. Monday morning I went to school like it was a regular school day. When I got there, there was all the friends that came from Terminal Island weren't at school, they weren't there. So that was kind of weird. I would say that probably 25 to 30 percent of the students were from Terminal Island and they weren't there.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.