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JF: But I, in January, January the 3rd, which was the day after my birthday, of 1946, the University of Washington started a catch-up course for returning veterans. A lot of people had returned before I did. And I signed up for that course. And one of the things I did, I took a news writing course. And it just so happened that the teacher was the news editor at the Seattle P-I, a fellow named Bruce Helberg. And one day he asked us to write a little autobiography. So I did, and told, wrote about my newspaper career in Baltimore. So he called me in his office a couple days later, and he said, "I understand you were, had some news, newspaper experience. And I said, "Yeah. I was an apprentice on the copy desk." And he had brought some stories, newspaper clippings with him with the heads torn off. And he said -- there were three of them, I think. And he says, "Here, write me some heads on these stories." Well, I hadn't done this for five years, but it came back. And pretty soon I dashed these heads off. He says, "Come on down to the P-I. I'll give you a job." And just like that. I don't think I was in school a month, and I had a job. So I went down to the P-I, and that was it.

In the meantime, a friend of my wife's was the advertising manager for a big store that used to be here that is no longer in existence. And she was trying to get me a job, because of her friendship with my wife, she was trying to get me a job on the P-I. Well, I already had the job before she got into action. But that's the way it worked. The funny thing that, we were in, when we came into New York Harbor, there were some newspaper people came aboard because we hadn't -- I didn't know it -- but we had some Indians aboard who were fairly famous for something or other. And these fellows were going to interview them. And I asked the two reporters, I said, "Any of you fellows have any contacts at all in Seattle?" And the guy said, "Yeah. I've got a friend works there on the Times." He said, "I'll give you his phone number. When you get home, give him a call. Maybe he'll find a job for you." Well, I never had to follow up on that because Bruce Helberg got this immediate job at the P-I. And I've been there virtually ever since.

SF: What were the different jobs that you had at the P-I?

JF: Well, I started on the copy desk, and I did pretty well then. We moved in the winter of 1948-49, we moved to the building where the globe was on Sixth and... well, any rate, we moved in there. And soon after we moved into the new building, why, they started a paper called The Red Line, which was an afternoon paper that was supposed to be in direct competition with the Times. And the fellow who was the telegraph editor was, preferred sports, so he would send in the sports. And the news editor at that time gave me the job as telegraph editor. So I started, that was my first editorship, and it was about 19 -- late part of 1949. Sixth, Sixth and Wall (St.) was where we moved to before the P-I moved down to the waterfront, where it is now. And, and from there I went to different editorships. I was picture editor for something like fifteen years, and makeup editor and news, news editor and so forth and so on. So I had a pretty good, lot of experience in those different jobs over the years.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.