Papa raised premium strawberries just outside of San Jose, California in the early 1950's.
We find this out in Chapter 21: "Girl of My Dreams." Because the novel mostly deals with life in the internment camp, and because moving to San Jose means that the family is free from the camp, you know that this question's answer will be found toward the end of the book.
This information about Papa's last years of life provides closure and relief for readers. We'd seen Papa struggling terribly to be a good father and to deal with his alcoholism, and so it's a great relief to learn here in one of the final chapters that he got sober and took over a large strawberry farm, occupying himself with meaningful work on his hundred acres of farmland.
His decision to move the family to a new area and to work on the farm also provides much-needed direction for Jeanne, who had begun to grow depressed and to hang around in the streets instead of focusing on her schoolwork. The move to the farm and to a new school for Jeanne gave her a chance to start over, both academically and socially.
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