This question is referring to what happens after the Wakatsuki family leaves the internment camp and comes back to the Los Angeles area.  They get a place to stay in a houising project in Long Beach, Cabrillo Homes.

Pretty much everything the family had stored and such had been stolen.  Most importantly, Papa's fishing boat was gone.  So now he had no work.  He tried to get a Japanese housing cooperative going, but he really didn't have a job.  That meant that Mama had to go and take a cannery job like the one she used to have before the war.