Movie 3: Scene 3
The next scene takes place in the San Joaquin Valley in 1937. Raymond and Lena are forced to abandon their dreams of being airplane designers and builders, and instead work as farm laborers. Raymond and Lena work alongside “Okies” and Mexican and Japanese immigrants on farms and orchards. These “Okies”, people from Oklahoma, and other South Western states traveled to California in hopes of escaping the debilitating effects of the Dust Bowl. They lived in overcrowded housing and made very small wages. As shown by Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother photograph, the Great Depression was a hard time for the migrant workers. Raymond and Lena worked on a farm that grew mainly tomatoes. This farm had many African Americans, and many Japanese immigrants who had come to America in search of a real job, but upon their arrival, found that the only jobs available were in farm work.
It was on this farm that Raymond met a Japanese- American named Mae. Raymond and Mae are very similar; they are both intelligent, hardworking, and have dreams of living back in urban Los Angeles. They fall in love. This relationship is unconventional-- during the 1930’s it was looked down upon for interracial couples to get married. They keep their relationship a secret, so as Mae and Raymond did not receive threats from the KKK or any other racist individuals...
