<Begin Segment 18>

TM: Now, leading up to the Vanport flood, what work was your father doing?

FP: He was, this is the time when he was transitioning, and I think he had just quit Kaiser Permanente because his lungs couldn't take it anymore, and he said, "Boy, if I work in this, I'm going to be gone by the age forty or fifty, so I have to get out of here. So he was probably in between jobs.

TM: And Kaiser Permanente, that means he was in shipbuilding?

FP: Yes, the shipyards.

TM: The shipyards, okay.

FP: Right, right. And then he found a job a little bit later after we fled, but I know that Dad didn't have a job at the time that we fled because that summer we picked green beans by the sackfuls, gunny sackfuls, that we would drag behind us.

TM: So you were out there doing that as well?

FP: Right, right. It was like a typical immigrant family that's just starting up.

TM: And with other Japanese American families?

FP: Right, right. And I believe the owner of the farm was named Spada, he was a well-to-do Italian farmer.

TM: And where was this farm?

FP: It was out near probably, you go straight out Powell to Sandy Boulevard? Not Powell. You go on Sandy Boulevard straight out, and there's the Spada Farms there, and some other farms. Right around the area of Costco, except across the road.

TM: Columbia Boulevard?

FP: Yes, yes.

TM: And you said your father's health was not good because of the shipyard in Kaiser Permanente? Was that a condition because of the asbestos?

FP: Right, we suspect that. And at that time, too, I remember him being very, very ill and recovering from surgery, he had varicose veins, and so he had his veins stripped so that he was able to work okay. So then we had the Vanport flood on the 31st of May.

TM: So living in the hotel and working out on the farm, your grandmother, your parents and you and your uncles.

FP: Were all dragging bean bags behind us, string beans.

TM: Were your uncles and their families with you?

FP: I don't remember. I think Uncle Ro might have been working at the, what is it, the Northwest Fruit & Produce Company, something like that. Right, and it was hard physical labor, but that's the only job he could find. He had gotten educated after the war on the GI plan, and probably from University of Minneapolis in business. But he, of course, he couldn't find, there's so much prejudice, he couldn't find any work. And Uncle Nobi used his grant from the...

TM: GI Bill?

FP: Right, GI Bill, and he attended Vanport City College, which later turned out to be the foundation of Portland State.

TM: Portland State University?

FP: Yes.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.