Becoming Mama-San. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

everyone a lot longer to fill their carriers. To compensate, Papa-san gave out different colored tickets in exchange for full carriers of berries. Each was worth a different amount depending on the color, and the value rose over the course of the season, as the berries got smaller. We started with red tickets, worth 25 cents each. Yellow tickets were valued at 35 cents, and blue ones were worth 50 cents apiece.

      While all of the pickers were motivated by money, a few also had an aesthetic sense for their work. Each time, they brought perfectly mounded carriers brimming with ripe, unbruised berries to the transfer station. Somehow, they transformed the simple, repetitive task of picking berries into a craft they took pride in.

      Workers were required to pick the rows “clean”—that is, they were expected to pick all of the berries that were ripe, not just the largest ones. Adults got a whole row to themselves, but the children got one side of a row or the other. With the deep furrows plowed between the rows, my youngest, five-year-old Ray, could completely disappear behind the lush growth of the strawberry leaves.

      Work always ended around three o’clock, when a large delivery truck arrived to pick up that day’s harvest. Strong young men loaded the berry flats onto the truck, which then went to a nearby barreling plant. There, the fruit was processed, frozen, and later shipped back East, eventually being made into jam or topping.

      The harvest lasted about six weeks, depending upon the weather. It was dirty, backbreaking work, even for young bodies.

      My kids worked hard every day, up to ten hours a day, six days a week. Sometimes, they would complain. “Mom, I’m tired,” Dave said. “I don’t feel like doing this any more.” His hands were stained red from the berries, his clothes covered in juice and dirt.

      “Here, let me help you awhile,” I said. I’d squat down with him at his row and help him fill his carrier much faster. As a straw boss, I did this with all of the workers over the course of the day. Picking with them for even a few minutes helped to sustain their efforts and renew their dedication.

      I had my children save all of their tickets for the whole season in separate jars. They counted their tickets almost every night, and kept track of how many they earned from day to day. At the end of every summer, they each received a big payout in cash. This was their spending money for the entire year. After their first year of picking, in 1965, their father took them to the neighborhood bank where they opened up savings accounts and learned to keep track of their money. Martha was eleven years old and David was nine. We decided it was not too soon for them to learn—even for little Ray—how precious money can be.

      After the initial excitement of the new season wore off, berry picking was a tedious, hard job, with low pay. To relieve the monotony, some of the young people brought portable AM radios. The fields echoed with the top hits of the day—“Yesterday” from the Beatles, “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, and the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” The music lifted people’s spirits, even though it got boring when the same songs played over and over again.

      Not everyone coped well with the boredom. Some gave up, often on their first day. Others tried to scam the system in various ways, eventually getting caught and kicked out. Those who stuck with it developed different strategies for staying motivated, such as getting competitive, feeling the responsibility to earn a living, enjoying watching their earnings grow, or simply taking pride in doing a good job. Each of them had to come up with his or her strategy for coping with the inevitable boredom that came with the job.

      As adults, my children have told me that the summers they spent picking berries were crucial to their success as adults. It taught them to persevere, which is a useful trait in virtually any career. They also learned the value of money and the satisfaction of knowing they really earned it.

      Every job has its boring parts, and almost any job can get boring after awhile. However, I have come to appreciate that boredom is a crucial part of our personal growth. I am glad my children learned to grapple with boredom at such a young age.

      Over the years, I have heard from a number of people who grew up working for my brother. All of them have said the same thing: picking berries taught them many important life lessons. Later on, they found that they were stronger and more resilient because they experienced and worked through the inevitable boredom that comes from repetitive hard work.

      Extreme boredom was something I had to learn to deal with when I was a teenager, but my circumstances were due to extreme events of a world in crisis. Yet, like my children, my boredom ultimately shaped my life in positive ways.

      On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed the U.S. Naval forces stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II. It was a huge shock to the American people as a whole, but people of Japanese descent felt an even deeper fear.

      In the weeks and months that followed, false rumors and panic spread about possible sabotage by Japanese people living in Hawaii and along the West Coast of the United States. Politicians, journalists, and others created a frenzy of anti-Japanese sentiment. The U.S. government enacted rules for Japanese living on the coast. The government limited our right to travel, and denied or limited our access to our bank accounts.

      Based on these fears, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. All people of Japanese descent on the West Coast were to be evacuated from their homes and placed in what the government called “internment camps.” We would soon learn that these were actually concentration camps where we were held against our will. Today, Japanese Americans consider these concentration camps, asserting that the word “internment” did not accurately describe the forced imprisonment.