<Begin Segment 19>

MR: Let's see. You mentioned that your mother had this fruit stand, or not fruit, produce stand. And were there any examinations people had to take to sell this produce?

MB: Uh-huh. Well, every year, we had to go to the public health nurse to get health exams. Twice a year, we had to go. If we saw the public health nurse, she charged fifty cents, and if we saw the doctor, it was two dollars per person. And what they were examining for was syphilis and gonorrhea. And after the examination, we were given these certificates that we had to display on the wall just like a person, like doctors that display their certificates that they get. And it used to cost us, since we had to go twice a year, five of us, it costs us five dollars a year. And about fifteen years later, fifteen, twenty years later, late in the fall when business was getting slow, my brother thought he would visit Mr. Wilson who had the next stand down the road from us, and they were sitting in Mr. Wilson's office. Well, it wasn't really an office. It was just a little space behind his display counter and where he had a stove and he sat and did his work. And my brother was looking around, and he didn't see any health certificate. We had to display our health certificates on the wall, and there wasn't any, so he asked Mr. Sunderland what, what, Mr. Sunderland didn't know what a health certificate was. What was it for? And so my brother told him, and no, they never had to get a health certificate. Well at that time, there were two other fruit and vegetable markets that sold plants and everything, Caucasians running, so my brother went to talk to them. None of them had ever heard, none of them ever had to get a health certificate. And my brother found out all the Japanese had to get health certificates, but the white man didn't. The City of Portland was treating us badly. They didn't want us to make money. Our license to sell was fifteen dollars. Mr. Wilson's license was ten dollars, and we just got charged more for everything. And every year, the inspector came to inspect what we were selling, and good fruits, tomatoes, whatever, they'd poke holes in the fruit with their finger, and then they'd say it was spoiled, and then he'd pour kerosene over all of them, so we couldn't sell them. And so by the second year when the inspector came, even though we were busy and couldn't spend the time following him, one of us did. And after we followed him around for two, three times, he quit coming, and we weren't bothered after that. But the white man did everything to keep us from earning money or making less, you know, cost more.

MR: What year was it that your brother discovered the difference in the treatment?

MB: Let's see. It must have been about 1950.

MR: So after the war?

MB: Uh-huh, after the war. See, Mr. Wilson didn't start his business until, oh, he started his business during the war when all the Jap-, before then, all the markets were Japanese, run by Japanese people. And during the war or after the war, soon after, a lot of markets sprung up all run by, well, you know, the white man, and farms were the same way. Oh, did you know that during World War II or before World War II, if the farmers didn't have much of a crop, he plowed the field under? You know, if only half the crop grew, half of the land is wasted, so he'd plow everything under and replant. Well, they caught this farmer doing that, the white farmer doing that, and he was arrested for destroying food. I bet you didn't know that. We heard that after we came back. I think two of the farmers were arrested that way; one, after the crop was over, he was just turning the ground over, and the other one because he had a poor crop. He turned it under, and someone reported him that he was plowing under good food.

MR: And is that because things were scarce then?

MB: No. Most of the farmers before World War II were Japanese. There were a few Italians, but not many. I mean there were Italians, but there were more Japanese. And after they put everybody in camp, there wasn't anyone raising vegetables, farms, and a lot of people, the white man got, you know, took over the farms and raised produce. And if you're not very experienced in farming, even if you plant a whole field, nothing's going to come up or, you know, you don't do a very good job. And I guess it was one of these farmers that was plowing his field under, and the law arrested him because instead of helping during the war, wartime, and helping to feed people here, he was plowing his crop under. But he wasn't plowing the crop under for that reason. He was plowing the crop under, a field takes as much work to spray or hoe or whatever, and if you don't get very much money, it's just a waste of time.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.