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JY: So anyway, that's one of the things, and I got back to camp and meantime guy says -- I was working on different projects in spring -- and says, "Well, you want to go seasonal work, pick peaches?" I says, "I don't know. Yeah, I guess I'll go." So from Heart Mountain went to Grand Junction to pick peaches, seasonal leave, and that's when first time I met the German POW.

AI: Excuse me. Where is Grand Junction?

JY: In Colorado. In middle Colorado. It's a peach country, peach and pear. Climate's like here. And we weren't allowed to go to town by ourself, we had to go with our boss, the owner of the farm. Yet these German soldiers, POWs, are walking around the place, Grand Junction. They had these armed guards down there, but they just walk around and do, you know. And that's the first time I encountered the POWs in Grand Junction. And these were all fair complexted German kids, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old kids. And Grand Junction is a lot of mosquitoes, 'cause the river part of it. And poor guys had mosquito bite (like) chicken pox. To us, we were on the farm, chicken, I mean, mosquitoes don't bother us one bit and don't bother me at all, but we felt sorry for those people. And then I didn't think nothing of it then. So when this situation in Tule Lake came up 'bout POW, it dawned on me. Were they free or were they behind barbed wire? Then that's where I started researching it a lot about this POW camp here, and talking to different people, and went to the restaurant and start asking about that. Then they start volunteering to talk about this, about the POW, how they celebrated the 50th anniversary and such. That's where it came from, because I, when I first ran across them in Grand Junction in 1943.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.