Customer Reviews

Petaluma's Poultry Pioneers

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This is a great book for anyone who knows or wants to know about the chicken town of Petaluma, but it also has a lot of information not available anywhere else regarding the tiny town of Penngrove, CA, the sleepy burg just north of Petaluma, where a concentration of Japanese chicken farmers produced chickens and eggs that had a hand in getting Petaluma the name "Egg Basket of the World" during its poultry processing heyday.

The stories told by some of the Japanese farmers and their descendants of the trials they went through as the war started and whole families were uprooted and sent to concentration camps in Colorado, some losing the farms and everything they had worked so hard for; and the fact that some of those very people then fought for America in the war (the famous 442nd Battalion, made up of Japanese soldiers, saved the Lost Battalion of Texas in France) is evidence of their patriotism and honorable nature.

I went to school with kids from many of the families who tell their tales in this book. The richness of the area is represented in full color through their memories.

These are stories told by people who lived them and grew up through them. I met one of the old timers on the road in Penngrove recently and he told me of locals and what they went through. He is an old man now but remembers all the details and family names as though he were speaking of yesterday's events. It took me back in time. Very well researched and written, from the author of the incredible Empty Shells book on Petaluma's poultry history, this book is really a must-have for anyone interested in the back story of the wonderful town of Petaluma, its surrounding towns and the people who struggled to squeak out a living there as it blossomed from a dirt-roaded, saloon filled bump in the road at the "top of the bay" to the world's most prolific poultry and egg producing town. And if you like this book, I highly suggest the aforementioned Empty Shells as well. It's harder to find in good shape, but well worth the expense. If you search you can find copies that are signed by the author and some which include an actual 1948 "Centennial of the American Poultry Industry" stamp inside, the first US stamp to feature a farm animal and only the second to show a bird other than the American eagle.