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AI: When, excuse me. When was that, that Pomona closed and you went --

JY: Pomona, I was there in Pomona from Memorial Day to latter part of September. We were the last train, 'cause my dad wasn't feeling too good. He wanted to come to Tule Lake, of all places, his heart condition. But they won't let him go so we had to go to Heart Mountain. So we were last train out of Pomona. So when I got to Heart Mountain, there was no job actually. So like I said earlier, I want to go into engineering, so I went to the engineering office and met a couple guys, and tell 'em what I want to do. And they found out what I can do, carpenter work in the trade, I didn't actually work at the trade. "Hey, we need guys out to the field." So I started working outside doing carpenter work. And they had this, built this canal in Heart Mountain, and this canal -- I have to go back -- was built during Depression years as a WPA labor. You probably heard the WPA. They built the Shoshone Dam, and the big canal across the Shoshone River. And they finished the canal, they had canal all around the foot of Heart Mountain. And when they got that done they said, "Well, let's turn the water on." So they turned the water on, and the water came across the Shoshone River to the big siphon pipe, and they got past the river and the water all of a sudden disappeared. Huge gopher hole, the hole must have been about 50 yards in diameter, like a big gopher hole. It went down, 5 miles down the line, it shot up at Shoshone River, the other side. And those WPA labor, they ran out of money so they left it there. So the Bureau of Reclamation just sat on it. So meantime, Bureau of Reclamation is the Interior Department, right. Said, "Hey, let's make a relocation center at Heart Mountain. Then maybe we can get some funds to fix the canal." So that's how Heart Mountain got picked. So meantime, they were talking about it, says, "We're recruiting guys to go fix the canal." "So, okay. Maybe I'll go over there." It's outside work, so it's seasonal work. So winter of '42, went out there and start working on this canal, filling, backfilling, compacting, get ready to line it with concrete so the water won't disappear. So we worked that fall and the winter, except we had to shut down in the wintertime because it freezes. Then went back to camp and worked in camp, and next spring went back out there. And it was March, everything was frozen, but we heat the water, we heat the gravel, we heat our sand, and then we poured concrete and got the canal all finished, ready for the summer crop. It was '43 summer, they have to start farming. And that's how that canal got fixed.

AI: How did -- what did you use for heating, for heating all the water? Heating all the...

JY: We used oil.

AI: Oil.

JY: We had oil, oil burners. Coal was impractical so we had oil burners, we had blow burners to heat the oil up. So that's how we did the canal. We finally got the canal done, and the water ran down and irrigated the Heart Mountain basin. And I talk about that, and nobody knows about that. So one of the research people from Wyoming University heard about it and called me, "We would like to talk to you about it." Because I got the only photo of the canal, was and the construction that we did. So those little things come up.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.