Our Stories
Making a Living After the War By Frank “Kik0” Peralta U.S. Navy Vietnam Veteran
And I still remember when my father would take her to lunch on Saturdays. And she’d come out, and they’d have a lunch break.
They used to say that the Logan Street bus that ran from Market Street from downtown to Encanto — when these ladies got on the bus, everybody else got off the bus because the smell was so bad.
Both my parents were hardworking individuals. My dad Carlos Peralta was a boxer before he was drafted in 1942 and served in the U.S. Army 101st Airborne during World War II. After the war he used his GI benefits and trained to become a plumber. And the GI bill also allowed him to buy us a better home in Logan Heights for my three siblings and me. My father grew up in that same neighborhood.
But it helped the people in the community to make money. It was a good-paying job. It was honest work.
AJulia Peralta & Carlos Peralta U.S. Army WWII Veteran
My mother Julia Peralta went to work in the Van Camps cannery in 1945 and retired after 20 years.
During this time period, everybody in that neighborhood worked at the cannery; my uncles, my aunts, and my grandmother all worked at the canneries. They all used to wear white uniforms. As a youngster, I always thought my mother was a nurse because of that color, as I got older I realized that she wasn’t. Working with the tuna fish, cleaning and packing all day long left them with an unforgettable smell. So, to this day, I hate fish. I don’t eat fish at all. But my mother used to be a cleaner. And she developed a rash on her hand. And she used to come in the evening time and she had to soak her hand in oatmeal to take away all of whatever she had on her hand. And it was pretty bad. She worked hard. Everybody worked hard in that neighborhood.
(Photos courtesy of Peralta family archives)
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