Moving to Torrance

My folks didn’t feel that was the best environment for me to grow up in. So they bought some property out in Torrance. It was a two-acre plot and they knew a lot of the other families there. Japanese families who had nurseries and they were all wholesale nurseries so. 

And I had pictures that I think I showed you of that land that they bought. They had two little houses on it. One of them we lived in; the other one was inhabited by a man who had several small children.

My mother used to go and visit her friends in the other nurseries and see how they did things and find out what they were planting and how they did it and all this. And then she’d come home and she would duplicate that.

And then my dad they didn’t have money for a greenhouse to build a glass greenhouse.

So my dad built one with plastic and that was their first greenhouse that they had.

And then they started making some money. So they started building a house. After all those years of being in in the America, their first house that they were able to buy and build.

And they made some friends, other wholesale people that their customers, one couple in particular, and they became very close friends and they traveled with that couple to Europe and other places.

I think it’s like the first time they ever reached a point where they felt comfortable enough they had enough money that they could do something like that. So which that was wonderful.

Date: May 13, 2022
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Evan Kodani
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum