Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Seichi Hayashida Interview
Narrator: Seichi Hayashida
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Sheri Nakashima (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: August 21, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-hseichi-01-0024

<Begin Segment 24>

SH: After we got married -- there were several during the remainder of the camp -- my wife just hated camp, she hated to be cooped-up, so to speak, not free to do, where, go where you want to, do what you want to do. We got to do what we wanted to, not what we wanted to do most. We wanted to leave camp and go to work someplace, get, start over again. And, because my, her older sister was in Ontario is how we happened to come out. Because they wrote and said, "Come on out if you can. If they let you out we gonna have lots of work for you." They were short-handed, 'cause all the young men and women were in the service, so the farmers there needed some help.

AI: And that was Ontario, Oregon?

SH: Ontario and Twin Falls area. Eastern Idaho also. But I happened to go to Ontario, it was closer and her sister and brother-in-law was there.

SN: How did that program work? I'll just call it a "work leave" program, I don't know what else to call it. How did you actually apply to be able to do that?

SH: The two big employers were the sugar company plants and they didn't come to hire workers for in the plant, but they came to help the farmers get labor to thin beets, and hoe beets. Everything used to have to be done by hand those days, today it's all done by machine. And they didn't have the labor, period. So they sent couple of men -- two factories came -- sent men directly to Tule Lake at the administration building. And there was notices came out, that if you wanna go out and not afraid to do any farm work, go to barrack so-and-so, in administration area, and get interviewed and get a chance to go out. So they stayed in camp for two, three days and they got all the workers they wanted. Those of us that grew up on farms -- the city people didn't go out, some city people went out that wanted, just want to get out for any reason, but if they did that they run in some hard work they weren't fitted for, and we were used to it.

AI: What months were those that you went out on the work leave?

SH: Pardon?

AI: What, do you remember the, which months you were out on the work leave?

SH: Oh, we left in... April, we went out in April and stayed in, stayed out there 'til end of Octo-, no, end of September. There wasn't any more work to do then.

AI: Both you and your wife were able to take the leave and go up to Ontario?

SH: Uh-huh. Yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.