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HH: And when you came back to the United States, how old were you?

GO: I was seventeen.

HH: Seventeen.

GO: And that was in the middle of the Depression, as you may know.

HH: If it's 1932, that would be in the middle of the Depression. And in what town or city, area did you live in at that point?

GO: Fortunately, my father's old friends, two families in Florin, agreed to become a guardian for me because I had no wealth and I came back alone. And so that's how I landed. I was detained at immigration at Angel Island for a few days, but with their assurance, I was able to land.

HH: How would you describe this town of Florin, California. What kind of town, was it industrial, agricultural?

GO: Florin is agricultural, predominately Japanese. And for that reason there was a segregated school, but it was an area where probably nobody wanted to develop into the agricultural land, but many Japanese pioneers went in and cultivated and turned it into a very productive agricultural land, primarily grapes and strawberries.

HH: Was that close to the wine area?

GO: Not... it's more of a table grapes.

HH: I see.

GO: Tokay grapes.

HH: When you came back at age seventeen, did you work, go to school, or what did you do?

GO: My ambition was to, if some family will take me in as a schoolboy, to get room and board and then continue my education. But in midst of depression, nobody could afford such luxury. So the first thing I did was try to earn as much money as I can working with the farm laborers earning nineteen cents an hour picking grapes and so forth.

HH: You were a farm laborer?

GO: Farm laborer, very difficult, hard work.

HH: Picking grapes in Florin.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.