<Begin Segment 58>

JA: Okay. While you were at Minidoka, is it true that you were able to leave once again to work on a sugar beet farm?

MH: Yes, uh-huh. We went out to Caldwell, Idaho, and that was with Seichi Hayashida and his wife, and we decided to go to this special farm in Caldwell that he thought was a great place to work. They had onions and they had sugar beets and so we could make a little bit more money there. So we decided to go with them. So we -- they had a house built for -- they had two-bedroom house so that way two of us, two families lived in one, and we took turns cooking, Chieko and I took turns cooking there, is what we did. And they build us a Japanese bath and so we were able to enter a Japanese bath there, too. And so we had a good summer there, helping with the onions and helping with the sugar beets, weeding, harvesting.

JA: And what kind of wages did you receive doing this work?

MH: That I can't quite remember what it was. It wasn't terrific, I know that, but I can't remember what it was now. I don't think I got paid, I think my husband got paid.

JA: So it was more the, the freedom of not being surrounded by barbed wire.

MH: In camp, (yes). Nice to get away.

JA: That was the biggest benefit.

MH: Right, there.

JA: The work was hard, the conditions were just slightly better.

MH: That's right, than being in camp.

JA: But you had the freedom.

MH: Yes, enjoy it.

JA: And that's a real valuable thing.

MH: Yes, uh-huh.

<End Segment 58> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.