pay for hard-hitting journalism. [applause] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> it's called the central valley but the central valley really goes from the place, bakersfield to sacramento even beyond. it's 400 miles long. we're in the middle of the biggest, most industrialized farm belt in the united states, if not the world. >> welcome to fresno, california, on a booktv. with help of our comcast cable partners over the next arguments we will travel the city to talk with local authors about the history and the surrounding area. first up, author david mas masumoto recounted personal story about childhood, race and

they did in california central valley. spirit one of my books i've written is called "harvest son" and it's a journey into my families past and looking at the integration of my grandparents from japan to america and then trying to plant roots in american soil and, of course, they see the contradiction of america, the racism of it and the struggles to try to establish themselves. historically japanese-americans had a very vibrant agricultural community. partly because when immigrants first game this was the only in 2.4 a lot of them in american economy, in american communities. certainly relocation and internment during world war ii shifted that so it concentrated even more of a stronger sense of being japanese-american. my generation has shifted. it's very classically immigrant story. my generation, we call ourselves third-generation in america.

>> the experience of my parents during relocation and world war ii internment of japanese americans i think was very common. there was crisis, turmoil, hysteria, and he did know what to do. i think like many of them they realized they had to just accept what was happening, do their own type of civil disobedience, but really accept this broader frame of this history that was unfolding along with all their chaos and uncertainty. growing up they rarely talked about it, and i only started piecing together stories i heard here and there, reading about it and understanding what a traumatic moment it was when you are trying to establish yourself here in america and trying to

literally plant roots here, but also at the same time understand, this is a country that didn't want them. they told him they were the enemy. they told them they need to go back home. of course, the irony for my parents, they were born here. back home was here and it was in that struggle i think that as i grew older and begin to understand part of the idea of struggle, i think of the struggles that i went through that were dwarfed by that moment in history, and how they had the resilience to work through that and then come back and literally plant roots here in the valley. my parents did not talk about it. my dad was this traditional stoic farmer, hardly say anything. my grandmother lived with us only spoke japanese in my japanese was a very good, but they would not talk about it. i think it's because they carried within them a kind of shame, guilt that is embedded when you're accused of being

something that you are not. as a writer i began to try to probe into this, ask questions, read more about it, talk to other families, and gradually, and it took time, gradually i begin to hear stories here for my father, a story there from my mom. my dad would talk about when we were once burning some would from dead trees, he said let me tell you about a fire that i once made. he told me a story about how when they had to leave, my dad was so mad he decided to say he is going to all the possessions of that they had that they couldn't carry because he did want to leave it for people who didn't want them. and i thought this is my dad, is quiet, reserved farmer showing a protest to select japanese-american lies matter type. it was amazing to hear these stories. so gradually as a writer you begin to piece together these stories. and the one take away i had was that i'm the one take away i had

from that was this idea of silence. it's hard to write about silence because writers think about words and dialogue, but part of my writing was embedded in the city of understanding what that silence means. and now that silence carries everything from their shame and guilt but also the resilience that they had to respond, come back to here in california to say we are america, we are part of america. we did not own land before the war, as most japanese-americans did not. when we came back, when my parents came back after the relocation camps, my father realize the way to get ahead in america was to own property. so we took this huge gamble and he bought 40 acres that we farm now. my grandmother, she was appalled. and i heard about the story. they argued, because my grandmother said, why do you buy

land here in america? because they take things away. she was absolutely right. because of the hysteria of world war ii, they took everything away from japanese-americans. so she was right to have this bitter attitude. my father at the same time understood that in order to establish yourself, you needed to become a farmer. you needed to transition from farmworker to farmer. so we bought this land. that day that they were leaving this rented shack that they live on to move here to this house that was on this property, my grandmother refused to go. she stayed in this little shack, and my dad got mad and he said look, i'm going to wait in the car until the sun sets. my was alive then was happy. he said we get a farm, i'm waiting in the car. so he waited in the car and then as a sun went down, my grandmother came out of the house carrying this black suitcase with a stencil number

of our family, as our family internment number. they got in the car and in silence they drove to this new farm, and that's our farm started. it wasn't this magnificent cheery ride. it was really capturing that whole sense of history that i try to write about and is one of my favorite stories actually not end up writing about, thinking a lot about how things begin and how farms are part of this whole wave of history that embodies all those elements of history. our farm face many challenges, and it's really in two generations. one was my dads generation were post-world war ii no one wanted to buy food down by the enemy, which was japanese-americans of course. so they struggled. amazingly they did what a lot of good farmers do. they united together. they formed cooperatives.

they started jointly marketing things and they found a way to work through the system and work the system. when i came back to the farm overt racism wasn't there but there is still embedded his dynamics, the spices. one of the vices was against large versus small. there was this drive that you need to expand your farm, grow things that are cheaper, more efficient and more productive. i came back thinking that's not the part i want to do. i want to grow something that has quality, that has flavor, and again that has that back story that came with it. that's one of the reasons why i talked my dad into saying let's start farming organically. i think it's a consumer, it's part of the public who appreciates. we were driven by value more than anything else. my grandparents did come to

america because they wanted to suddenly become the wealthiest people in the world. they were driven here by dreams and hopes. my parents came back from the relocation camps too far because they were driven by initially desperation, and also this sense of wanting to become american and plant roots here. and i came back to the farm knowing that i wanted to continue that legacy in many ways. and at the same time right and tell stories about the things i was witnessing. i was like lots of farm kids that grew up in the '60s that i couldn't wait to get off the farm, right? no one wanted to farm. i grew up in a really lively japanese-american community, and all of us went off to college. that was the goal for all of our parents in our generation, to get the kids off the farm, give them educated so they could find something better. i went on to college i thought would never bring me back to farm. i went to berkeley. i studied sociology.

that would never bring me back to farming. but then i did spend two years living in japan as an exchange student, and that changed my life. it was retaking a culture that was remedied but yet realizing i was not japanese. during the two years i spent about half the time working thea small little rice farm that my grandmother had left, working alongside her brother in japan. i remember stopping and thinking, this is exactly what i'm trying to run away from. what is it? it was really the call of the land. the dynamic was i did not understand how to grow rice. i understand, i did not understand how to grow rice but i understood how to grow peaches. i realized i need to come back here to see what this was like. checking back and shocked my dad saying i want to come back and farm a little with you. so he was shocked because he thought none of his sons, none of his children were going to

farm, just like most farms around you. so the transition was wonderful in the sense that my dad was very quiet and very reserved. so when i came back to the farm, started making mistakes, started doing things, there was a lot of just, a few soft grounds, nodding at the head, and in silence. that's when i begin to go crazy and say tell me, and by doing it right or wrong? how do you feel about it? he was wonderful because he just allowed me to fail. i think that was the biggest take away i had. when i came back i also started looking at the landscape of farming and understanding the growing pressure to grow in size, to grow crops, to grow crops that are designed for a mass-market. i came back wanted to do something different and that's why we started farming organically. and at the same time hoping that this precious fruit that we grew with it in an aquatic -- organic market place that favored

character and ironically valued the backstreet of food we grow. it seemed to have all worked. my daughter as she begins to farm with me, i begin to think and we often talk, is my role a teacher, a mentor, is it something that just passes on an hand something down? it turns out it's a little of everything. i think my daughter wants us to be partners, which really wasn't quite what i was expecting. you think of your best teachers you had, they were teachers, not partners. but then i started thinking more about and maybe this is part of a millennial way of looking at the world where the world is much more inclusive as opposed to hierarchical. so we are evolving this new relationship and literally now she's a partner on the farm, understand how she wants us to make decisions together. there are times when i thought i would be really happy if you kind of made that decision, but

that's not what she wants to do. who could complain about that? i had to stop myself from thinking, this isn't quite the story i thought was the narrative i thought was going to happen, but it's a very different and unique narrative at the same time. this is an ironic twist, understanding the whole legacy of immigrants and immigration that affected my family, when he first arrived from japan and anderson california agriculture that is swirling and churning and growing and expanding all at the same time this'll issue of immigrants and immigration are part of the fabric of agriculture. it continues today. the workers that we have are part of this whole new definition of what does it mean to be an american and an immigrant, and they're all part of the food system that we have? i hope people take away from my stories and my books a sense of authenticity. this is the real world. i'm not a journalist who spent

one summer on for and writes about food. i have lived this. my family has been part of this for generations. this is what i live and breathe, and heard from at the same time because i tried to write about that authentic life of farming and being a family at the same time, and the struggles and challenges that we have within that both economic forces, departmental, climate change, prices, shifting weather. those are all part of what we do here in the farm. that's part of again the story of food that i try to write about. i hope people take away that real taste of the food from the stories that i write. spirit you are watching tv on c-span2. we recently visited fresno, california, with the help of our comcast cable partner to talk with local authors and tour the cities literary sites. next, learn about a plane crash that killed 28 mexican migrant

workers and deported by the u.s. government in 1948. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ become some woody guthrie slicks, when the plane crash happened the way the story goes,