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AI: Well, now, of course, now, color photographs are very, are no big thing because it's very common. But for people who don't know about coloring photographs, in that era, when photos were only black and white, could you tell a little bit about that process, what's involved?

PB: Well, first of all, they usually made kind of a tone print. Prints are usually black and white; we made the sepia tone which has a brownish tint to it, which takes color better, true colors better. And we used special Marshall paints. They come in tubes, and there's, you have mix the different colors in order to get certain tones, and that depends on the artist, whoever, if they have taken special lessons like some of my friends did, why, they naturally learned what colors to mix. And if you haven't had special lessons, why, you more or less mix and match, or through trial and error, you learn which is the best combination. And I think I did that mostly, just mix and match and by trial and error, and with some help with some of... well, there was one retoucher who also did coloring and she helped me a lot. And you color -- and I think hand-colored pictures, well, the pictures nowadays, I think the colors do remain. But in the early colored photos, in a few years, they'd fade, 'cause I have a number of pictures that are just fading away to nothing. But the hand-colored ones, they don't fade, and they're like heavy oils, they stay permanently. And has a real nice tone to it if you become good at it. And that finally became my main profession, although I started out as doing everything in the finishing department.

AI: Well, before we go there, I wanted to also catch up a little bit about what was happening with your son Jim in Minidoka, because he was still a teenager, and he was going to school in Minidoka, but I think you said that he, he wanted to go out of camp.

PB: Yes. He, he wanted to go out of camp... first of all, they were calling for volunteers who would help in the harvesting of various crops in the area, and they weren't able to get workers, so they turned to the people in camp to come out and help harvest. So he thought he'd go out, and so he went out and he said he was on a bucking, what they called bucking... potatoes, that, I think what he did was load 'em onto the trucks when they were filled up, and strengthened his muscles in his arms, and he worked, I don't know just how long he worked, but a short time, and when he came back into camp, his muscles, he had huge muscles on his arm. He just changed like overnight. He was really well-built; he had big muscles and big shoulders, and he enjoyed being out on the farm so much. And he said he wanted to go out permanently and go to school. But, of course, the camp people wanted to send him where the Quakers were supposed to help people from camp, and they would hire them as houseboys, and they could go to school. So he wanted to go back east; I didn't like the idea that he was planning on going all across the United States to Connecticut, but he said he'd be okay. So I gave my okay, although I really didn't feel right about sending him. I gave him as much money as I could afford to give him, and he went off with some of the other boys. And I guess they made a stopover in Chicago, and he went on to Connecticut. But he was real happy about going out.

AI: And so what he, what he was going to do was, the situation was that he was supposed to live with a family in Connecticut, and work there in the family's home while he was also finishing high school. Is that right?

PB: Right. He was going into a Quaker family, and he would work there as a houseboy. But in the meantime, he would attend high school until he graduated. So he did that, but he didn't tell me at the time that he didn't get very good treatment where he was, so he quit and he left the home, went out on his own, and got a one-bedroom apartment, and worked as a pinsetter in a bowling alley. And he was doing exactly the same thing my dad did, because that's what my dad did when he first came to this country, and one of his jobs was to set pins in a bowling alley. And he was learning the language, studying English, and it just seemed like my son was doing everything that my dad, same thing my dad did.

AI: What a coincidence.

PB: Yes, and he did finish school, he went to Westport High School in Connecticut and graduated. And he told me later, too, that he had met a very nice Japanese boy who also was out there just like he was. Only thing, that he was fortunate that he got in a good Quaker family. But I questioned him further because I wanted to find out who this young man was that was so good to him, that they said if it wasn't -- he said if it wasn't for him, he would have really had a hard time. Because this boy helped him, and unfortunately, my son doesn't even remember his name. [Laughs] And I said, "Well, can't you think even what his first name was or anything?" He says he has no idea. So I don't know, I would like to find out, and he says, "Well, maybe he had to go in the army just like me, and he might have gotten killed or something." He says he just has no idea what happened to him.

<End Segment 44> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.