Interviews

1. His family's migration to Salinas, California

2. Father created a partnership to grow and ship vegetables

3. Father's business partner operated their farming business during WWII

4. Father was convinced the constitution would protect him

5. Japanese were not welcomed back to Salinas

6. Felt no hostility in Los Gatos, California after the war

7. Able to settle easily in Los Gatos with foresight and luck

8. Requested assignment in Europe to avoid combat in the Korean War

9. Taking over his father's business after father's accident

10. Mochitsuki tradition

11. Feelings about redress

12. Mr. Hirasaki brought World Fair Japanese pavilion to Gilroy

(b. 1935) Sansei businessman.

Father created a partnership to grow and ship vegetables

When you don’t own any land, all you can do or the best you can do is to share crop with a landlord and you pay your rent through the crops that you grow. What I can recall was that the sharecropping was with a Swiss family, a Giatanini family in Salinas. They’re Swiss immigrants, but they controlled some of the land.

Together with about six or seven Issei Japanese, so about nine of them together formed a partnership to go into the farming business to grow and to ship vegetables. My father felt that there was no way that you could prosper at any way or accumulate anything unless you were not only a grower but also a shipper. And so therefore at an early age, that’s why he never finished his education. To grow and ship vegetables.

agriculture farming sharecropping

Date: March 22, 2018

Location: California, US

Interviewer: John Esaki

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Tom Yuki was born on June 29, 1935, in Salinas, California. His father belonged to a farming partnership before World War II and was able to continue the business while incarcerated at Poston, Arizona, with the help of his business partner via telephone and telegram. After returning from Poston, the family moved to Los Gatos, California, and continued with their business. Tom went to the University of Santa Clara and joined the military, assigned to France as a Quartermaster officer. He was working as a contract administrator in a corporation when his father died, leaving Tom to take over the business as managing partner of Yuki Farms. Tom has served as board member to many organizations including his current role for the Japanese American National Museum. (December 2018)

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