Tanimura success story did not come easy for ag giant

One of the families affected by WWII and internment camps were the Tanimuras of local ag giant ‘Tanimura & Antle.’

Today, one of the nephews of co-founder George Tanimura spoke out at the Monterey County Board of Supervisors meeting.

Salinas-based Tanimura & Antle owns more than 27,000 acres and farms between California, Arizona and Tennessee.

Specializing in lettuce and other produce like broccoli and cauliflower, it’s been a lot of hard work for the Tanimuras to get to this point.

The family has been farming in the Salinas Valley since the 1930’s.

But that changed with World War II when most of the family was interned at the Posten Relocation Center in Arizona, losing everything they had worked for.

Gary Tanimura’s father actually served in the U.S. Army in Europe during WWII.

“Unfortunately my parents didn’t really talk to much about it. But I learned a lot from my uncles Tommy and Bobby, they were just elementary school kids when they were in Posten so they were more open to talk about the subject when they were living in Posten,” says Tanimura.

The end of the war marked a new beginning for the family.

They went to Gilroy for a few years before being able to buy some land in aromas.

“They worked together as a family more or less and pooled together their money and started small, you know I remember like i say working side by side with my aunts and my cousins and my brothers and sisters, you know bunching onions and then seeing them pack the onions and I think that’s one thing great, it was tough time, I look back fondly at those times that as a family we worked together for the betterment of the whole family,” says Tanimura.

Sandy Lydon, Historian Emeritus at Cabrillo College says the Tanimuras are a success story. But others weren’t as lucky.

“They come back, varying degrees of success but maybe the one advantage is they knew the landscape and they knew the rules and they learned the rules under the toughest possible rules you can imagine. I mean the alien land law, they couldn’t own property, I mean they had to work around….. And as things lessened and alien land laws were removed, they were able to accelerate but you don’t want to get the impression they all came back and were successful. That’s not the way it worked,” says Lydon.