<Begin Segment 32>

AI: What did you decide to do after that?

GY: Well, at the same time that the draft was, became effective and that we were allowed to go, leave camp, I decided well, I would like to leave camp because of the, life in camp is not a very pleasant life at all. And I had friends in Chicago already who had received permission to leave and were living in Chicago. I and several thousands of others then left immediately, and most of us went to Chicago because the job opportunities were good in big city. There was a labor shortage because of the wartime. The attitude of people in the Midwest -- for example, Chicago -- was a little bit different toward the Japanese Americans as opposed to the attitude of the general populace of the West Coast in that there were very few Japanese Americans there. During the postwar years, maybe three or four or five hundred at the most in Chicago.

AI: Oh, you mean prewar?

GY: Yes -- yeah, prewar, before the war. And so there was not that sense of, of our being immigrants and foreigners kind of thing. It was a rather neutral attitude toward who we were. And we did provide a certain need that they had in Chicago in terms of the population, there were jobs. And the companies were more than happy to hire Japanese Americans who are very hard workers, conscientious workers. And we were happy to be out. We were happy to have a job, to enjoy this freedom once again as citizens. So many of us worked, and there were quite a few Isseis who went, also. But most of these jobs were menial jobs in the services. For example, hotels, became maids and worked in the kitchen in restaurants as dishwashers, and these are the kind of jobs -- I worked in a book-publishing company and did a lot of the menial work of stacking books or stacking paper and so, so on.

AI: Excuse me.

GY: Yeah.

AI: Did you have to have a job before you could get out, or how --

GY: At, when I went out, there were, I didn't have to have a job. The American Friends Society, the Quaker group, was kind enough to help internees who were leaving camp by setting up hostels. For example, there's a hostel there where this rather large apartment was -- well, not apartment -- large house, I guess, all these rooms were made into a hostel, sleeping quarters, one or two beds. And it was temporary, of course. And I think there was a office set up by the government to help with the people who were relocating to Chicago in some sort of job-referral system there. But I didn't have that because there was an informal set of, system in that we would be talking to other Nisei, "Hey where do you work?" You know, why don't you do this or that. And there were several places, places that we were accepted as employees. So that was a networking that provided us with information about jobs and housing, too. And what --

AI: And --

GY: Most of this, this networking took place at dances and social gatherings of Niseis at that time, yes.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.