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AI: You know, before, just before we leave this era, I wanted to ask, you had mentioned briefly earlier about some of the labor issues that had come up in '47, '48 while you were there at American Council. Could you tell a little bit about what were some of the key issues coming up around labor in unions?

EH: Well, you know, the most familiar one I would be, know about, is the meatpackers union that Ralph's brother was involved in. But again, those were maybe -- and maybe in Chicago, labor was a more significant issue. And again, I don't, we didn't get any labor kinds of insights when we were on the West Coast, though I now, decades later, I found out that the cannery workers had a good union. And I had a friend who, whose only daughter was someone who was always at our house, just lived across the street they were at the same church, and she died in Topaz, I think. That family was, you know, assigned from Tule Lake to Topaz, and she had always complained about stomachaches, and it turned out that she had TB of the intestines. But also that, as many serious illnesses, I think she died of meningitis, because that's, you know, that's what she succumbed to. But this woman, her mother, and a lot of Japanese in Seattle, in Sacramento, worked for the canneries. And when Mrs. Hiroda was in a retirement home, she was, she was living on the cannery's retirement checks, and I forgot what came along, social security or something, and she says, "Iranai yo," and she was donating it to the church or something, and she wasn't living luxuriously, but, you know, apparently was a, the cannery union was a strong union. And, I think that spells, that, that speaks well for that cannery. I wonder what it's like now. Thank heaven that was there for Issei women like Mrs., 'cause Mrs. Hiroda lost her husband shortly after coming back from evacuation, and she lost her only child in camp, so she was really alone. But my mother, I have a writing of my sister's, she writes a brief description of my mother. And she says, in that write-up she says my mother either got fired from the glove-making company, she got fired, or she got, quit, because she was organizing a union, and nobody appreciates that, so you, somehow find ways to eliminate you.

AI: How do you think your mother got involved, active, so active in, to the point that she would be organizing for union?

EH: Well, she, you know, she, she recognized good working environments, and if it was piece-meal, that one more penny per item was going to be significant. And, you know, you always feel underpaid... the other thing that worried me a little bit was she was disapproving of young mothers leaving their little ones in Grandma's care, and she would, she would tell them to, "You stay home with your children, you make Grandma come and work here," you know, things like that, and I, I don't know how well that sat, but in some ways she was right in that young mothers -- because you feel a little guilty keeping your -- and I think she also remembers that, that when Sara was past two, the Catholic Church in the neighborhood opened a nursery and they wanted my mother to send Anna and Sara, but particularly, think Anna eventually was in kindergarten by that time, but she sent Sara. And every morning the driver would come to pick her up, and she, Sara just cried and cried, and I remember how hard that was, to even see her going off early in the morning. And I think my mother remembers that and feels like... I remember her, when Sara was born, she was saying what a lot of difference she was feeling in motherhood from the time I grew up and when Sara, she considered herself, she said, "God certainly knew what he was doing, I'm too old for this," or something. And she was only thirty-four, but she felt you were in better shape in your twenties to be delivering and being a mother. And I think that -- her other influence maybe, was Toyohiko Kagawa in Kobe, who probably organized unions. He was a dynamic social work kind of, lived in, lived in the slums of Kobe. But her daughter, his daughter was the Issei minister here at Japanese Presbyterian. Ten, ten years ago probably, but my mother gave Reverend Kagawa lot of money. At one point she said, "No, I don't have any more money. Kagawa Sensei yoku takara," meaning she sent, she sent her savings to a certain extent to Kagawa Sensei. And I guess that's alright, that was her privilege, and we were supposed to be old enough to be self-sufficient. But she believed in, in union system, organizing.

She had to do a lot of educating for, to get the Issei and Nisei women to believe in this, and stand up for your, your responsibilities. If you want better wages, you stay and fight. And that was, that was hard because everybody had families to go home to, and dinner to prepare, and, but I think my mother was militant that way, and sometimes hard to cope with, in churches.

AI: Now speaking of unions, you also belonged to a union when you were at American Council.

EH: (Yes), and, and that wasn't very, we weren't very involved, we just knew we had to, we were, we would be supportive, you know, but there wasn't any that I knew of. I don't ever remember going to a union meeting, for instance. And again, maybe a core group made the decisions, and that was all right. The... people like meat packers really had very malicious tactics thrown at them, and dangerous, so they had a right to, to always be active in union issues. And, that's what Charlie Hayes believed in. That they knew, he knew what the poverty life was like, and they needed. His father worked for the same union, and -- but when it came, it comes to strikes, big companies can be very vicious. In fact, I think they had him in jail over a trumped-up charge of some kind.

AI: They had Charlie Hayes in jail?

EH: (Yes), you know, I was telling you that one morning at coffee at American Council, Charlie, I mean Joe Lowman came in bleary-eyed 'cause he'd been up all night, in jail talking to the strikers, and Ralph said, "Well, I have a brother in jail," and that was such a surprise, and Charlie brought, I mean Joe Lowman almost dropped his coffee cup, said, "You're not (going to) tell me Charlie's your brother?" "(Yes) he's my brother." And see, he had stayed up all night, and it took, it took a year or so to win that case. In fact, I think, the Wilson, I think it was Wilson Packing Company, the company had fired Charlie. After drumming up this, these charges and he was in jail, and they fired him. But when, then it took NNRB a while to verify, and win that case. And the fact that he had been fired was not serious because the union had picked him up as an employee by that time, grievance committee, and so he wasn't lacking for support. The kind of thing in those days was for a black official like Charlie, and he probably was unique. I mean, there weren't many black officials in any union, that when he had to travel to cover a seven-staff, seven-state area to travel to the South with black, with even a white co-worker, and the police would do all kinds of vicious things if you were black, and take liberties. So when they got stopped and the white guy said, and challenged him, "Here, call this number, let's see how far you get. Throw us into jail if you, if you have to. But I'm telling you, call this number." And Charlie had to say, after the police was out of hearing range, "Don't you ever talk like that to a policeman while I'm in the car, 'cause you may be able to get home, but they, they'll do all kinds of things. I'll get thrown in jail." And so poor Emma, his wife, was always, she was always a kind of a nervous wreck from worrying about what was happening to Charlie. Though she, she became active in PTA in Hyde Park in the early days. And that was kind of unusual for blacks to get, be able to be active in PTA, but he really was a great guy. I'll have to get you a copy of that obit when I find it.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.