<Begin Segment 25>

AA: When the refund was over, I had to have a job, and so I went to the Civil Service Commission and I said they, Civil Service Commission at that time was laying off all the temporary employees and giving jobs to the veterans that were coming back. And so I said, "I need a job," so they sent me to the, what is now the FAA. It was known as the Civil Aeronautics Administration at that time, so I got a job with them. But in order for me to get the job, they had to lay off one person that was an old man that was a wartime employee. And so that didn't go over too good with the people in that warehouse, to think that a Japanese had replaced one of their buddies. So they gave me the cold shoulder for a couple of years.

TI: Were you the only Japanese American in the shop?

AA: Yeah, I was the only one, yeah.

TI: And what kind of work was this?

AA: Oh, I was in charge of all the stationery supplies and sending the supplies up to the office. And because of my background in the military, and I was familiar with electronics, and so the Civil Aeronautics Administration was, had a lot of electronic transmitters and receivers and things like that, so the clerks and things, they weren't too familiar with the technical portion of it. And so I was filling in, and the people uptown would, the procurement office would order things, and those girls up there were, in procurement, they weren't technically knowledgeable either. And so when some vendors wanted to substitute something, they'd come down and ask me, and I'd tell 'em whether the substitute was satisfactory or not. My boss got laid off for some irregularities, sale of surplus material that we had, and he got laid off. And so because of my college background in economics, I got the acting supervisor of the warehouse.

TI: And so you supervised all those guys who were giving you the cold shoulder all these years?

AA: Yeah.

TI: And so how did that work out?

AA: Well, that, all of 'em didn't... pretty soon they hired a couple of other GIs, and I got along fine with the others. But anyway, the other guys that were giving me the cold shoulder, they tolerated me because I was their boss. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, I hope so. And then how long were you with the Civil Aeronautics, CAA?

AA: They finally, they finally opened up the, my position, and they put out the advertisement, but instead of giving me the job, they gave it to a fellow in the Alaska region that was housed in the same building as I was. He had a lot more experience than I, he had worked for them for about ten years, I had only worked for them for two or three years, and so... but I had a college education and I had a background in electronics, but they still gave it to him.

TI: So, so what did you do? So you were then demoted back to your previous position?

AA: Well, I was never promoted, I was just acting.

TI: Oh, I see, okay. And so all of a sudden you had a new boss, essentially.

AA: Yeah. And he was a nice guy, I got along with him fine, but I didn't make waves. Another interesting facet of my job there was that there was a Japanese girl that was working in procurement, she was a GS-4, and they wanted to give her, give her a promotion to a 5. So they wrote up the position description of so many years' experience and things like that. I wasn't aware of what was going on, and I saw this advertisement and I looked at it, and I says, "Gee, I could do that job very nicely." So I put in a bid, and then pretty soon, a couple weeks later, I got a visit from my boss, and the personnel boss, and the procurement boss. And he says, "Hey, we got a dilemma here." He says, "We, to be honest with you, we wrote the position description to promote this other person." He says, "You're a veteran, and this other person was a veteran, too." Says, "You've had an experience as an accountant in camp, Minidoka, and also you got a, you got a degree in the university whereas she didn't. And also, you're familiar with electronics." So he says, "You should be appointed to that position, but that's going to throw a monkey wrench because we don't have an extra position to put this woman, she can't take your job, she's not qualified." And so he said, "What we'll do is we'll promote you to the same position." I was a GS-3, so they jumped me one position to a 5, and I knew this person, and so I said, "Well, okay." They said, "Be a nice guy and withdraw your application," so I did.

TI: That's interesting how things like that work.

AA: [Laughs] Yeah.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.