By Emil Guillermo
Record Staff Writer
Published Friday, August 20, 2004
STOCKTON -- Every real Stockton story begins and ends with the land. And in between come the tears.
Ask Katy Komure, and she'll say tears come when she recounts how her family was forced from their farm in French Camp during World War II and put into a horse stall in a Japanese internment camp.
"They were really scared of us," the American-born Komure, 81, said with a defensive laugh.
Ask James "Ernie" Podesta and his eyes will also moisten at the mention of the war.
"I guess I'm just a sensitive guy," the 84-year-old said as he sat at the kitchen table of his farm home in Waterloo.
He remembered Dec. 7, 1941, well. On that day he turned 21, and the whole world changed.
"It was pretty traumatic for my birthday," said Podesta, who soon after enlisted in the Navy, served three years in Europe and Asia, then returned to work his wife's family farm.
The stories of Podesta and Komure are part of a rich fabric, the warp and woof of generations, stretched over Greater Stockton from one end of the county to the other.
Now, University of the Pacific's Jacoby Center has compiled 54 individual stories, representing nine diverse ethnic groups, including African-American, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Mexican-American and American Indian, in a unique oral history project called STOCKTONSpeaks.
At the Hands Across Stockton event on Saturday, Podesta and Komure will be part of the first nine stories unveiled, each running three generations, showing all at once the common themes among Stocktonians.
"The compelling part is listening to a person tell their own stories," said Bob Benedetti, the executive director of the Jacoby Center, which received $160,000 in support from the California Council for the Humanities, the Irvine Foundation and community donors. "The idea was everybody has these stories from childhood to adulthood. Let's find out what they are and share them with each other as a way to show how we're the same and how we're different."
Katy Komure sat in the living room of her family's ranch house off Mathews Road, the one with the koi pond and tractors parked in back.
Her father emigrated from Hiroshima, Japan, at the turn of the century, worked the railroads as most Asians did, then found his way to French Camp where he grew fresh produce and trucked it to market.
Both were fully entrenched in Japanese culture, and Katy Komure was aware of the differences at a very early age. Born in Lathrop, she considered herself very American. She attended French Camp grammar school, but also went to two hours of Japanese school. Her parents spoke only Japanese at home and maintained such a strong sense of the culture that when she was 14, the family tried to convince her to follow the traditional practice of an arranged marriage, using a middleman. But she balked at the idea.
Instead, she immersed herself in the nursing program across the fields at San Joaquin County General Hospital. Her father didn't mind because he sensed his daughter didn't have the physical stamina to do the hard farm labor, she said. But in 1942, Katy Komure's life changed again when Japanese-Americans were sent to World War II internment camps.
"People in camp thought we were on our (the United States') side," she said. "And people outside thought we were the enemy. And I was nowhere. It's terrible to not have a country."
For four months the family lived in a horse track in Turlock.
"It was a stable," she said. "The roofs didn't even meet and all the rain came down and poured in. It smelled real bad. That's how it was for us."
She tried to mask her emotion with a defensive laugh, but anger filtered through.
"We went obligingly," she said. "But we didn't have much of an alternative. And we didn't know any better to do anything."
She paused, then shook her head. "It's disturbing to talk about it."
She hopes that as people understand her story, what happened to her doesn't happen again. "We learn by error," she said. "But we don't seem to learn about history. It always repeats itself."
Later they were relocated to the Gila River internment camp in Arizona. When her family came back to French Camp, Komure finished her nursing degree at University of California Medical School in San Francisco, and later worked at Stockton's St. Joseph's Medical Center, then at Permanente Hospital in Oakland and at San Joaquin General Hospital.
In 1947, she married Stockton-born George Komure turned to farming after he couldn't find a job in electronics. They started a family, and had three children, Jeannie, Donna and Dean. "I mainly do a lot of commercial work," said Dean Komure, 51, a graduate of University of California, Davis. "My dad farmed. What I do is different."
Komure works for other farmers and construction groups, prepping land, planting, furrowing. He complained about the high cost of doing business, and the low prices for crops. He's tried wheat, basil, oregano, different row crops. He laments how hard farming has become, because deep down he sees the value in the valley soil. But when he doesn't get a fair price for his crops, he gets angry.
"What do you want us to do? Sell all the land for houses and buy foreign food?" he asks rhetorically. He believes that soon Americans will be dependent on fresh food from foreign growers who will control prices. "Just like we have for oil," he said. Ernie Podesta, another contributor to STOCKTONSpeaks, shares Dean Komure's views. "The best land is always being blacktopped," said Podesta.
Born in San Jose in 1920, Podesta was actually groomed to enter the family grocery business. His father, John, emigrated to San Francisco from Italy after the 1906 earthquake. The family moved to San Jose, but came to Stockton when he noticed the Italian migrant workers move to the crops in Linden, east of Stockton. "They came up here to pick cherries," he said. "Men were boarded 40-50-60 at each place. They used a lot of groceries."
His father sensed a need, loaded up a truck and serviced them all.
Young Ernie stayed in San Jose where he was referred to as a "foreigner" and "intruder."
He was even surprised at the variety of names and epithets for people who ate pasta, he said. "Spaghetti bender," Podesta said, was one of the nicer names.
His family followed the Italian migrants for good when they opened up a grocery store in Linden in 1932, but the business was not easy.
"My dad had to carry so much credit," he said. "In the Depression, it was tough for everybody. Some families didn't pay for years."
Podesta worked for his dad as a baker and planned to apply to the University of Santa Clara after high school. Instead, he found his way to San Francisco, where he worked as a machinist.Then on Dec. 7, 1941, his 21st birthday, his future was defined by world events. He joined the Navy and served for three years.
The war experience changed his view of the world. And when he returned home, he gravitated to the land. "I didn't have anything to do, so I started helping my in-laws," he said. "I always liked the outdoors."
He soon took over the farm from his father-in-law and has since seen farming change.
"We had it hard," he said. "We did everything by hand. Walnuts we harvested by hand with 100 people. Now four or five is all you need."
His daughters have seen the changes and have adapted.
Daughter Pam Salmon, 55, she still lives in a back orchard with her family -- proud farmers.
"It's something we cherish because of family involvement," she said. "Farms are passed down through the generations. ... This is our roots."
Her own daughter, Kathleen, 21, who helped out with irrigation as a kid and led sorting crews as a teen, is now an agriculture business major at Fresno State.
When Podesta is asked about how residential housing growth is creeping onto the remaining valley farm land, he just shrugged and said he didn't know.
But Kathleen Salmon was quick to acknowledge the farm was in her blood.
"They ain't getting that," she said. "They couldn't offer me enough."
* To reach reporter Emil Guillermo, phone (209) 546-8294 or e-mail eguiller@recordnet.com
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