Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tokio Hirotaka - Toshio Ito - Joe Matsuzawa Interview
Narrators: Tokio Hirotaka, Toshio Ito, Joe Matsuzawa
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Date: May 21, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-htokio_g-01-0033

<Begin Segment 33>

JM: The labor situation was getting kinda tight. You know, all the male people were in the service, and no one to take care of things that, well, the war effort. That was mostly done by 4-F, or women, or old people.

AI: So tell me about your experience, and how did you decide to go out, and what did you do?

JM: Well, at that time, it's like I said, they were hurting for labor and so, somebody had the bright idea of well, if we've gotta feed 'em why, let 'em work. So that was the mentality they had. Farmers on the outside got together and said, "Well, we could use those people." They contracted people out of the camps to go and work the stoop labor type of work, out on the farms. And so, lot of 'em took the opportunity to go out, get out and stretch their legs, stretch a little bit. And it was hard work.

AI: What was the first crew that you went out on?

JM: Well, we went out on a beet topping contract in Utah. So we got a few of the fellas together. Well, I being the oldest, we got six of the Bellevue people to go out together, which included Tosh Ito, and myself, and my brother Roy, that's three. And then there was three more Bellevue people, they all three of them deceased, but Tosh and I and my brother are the only one left of that crew. So we went out and topped beets for, during the season -- I think it was started at 'round about September, didn't it?

TI: I believe so.

AI: September '42? And where was that?

JM: This, we went to Utah, to a farmer by the name of -- he was a Mormon farmer -- by the name of Garner. And so we worked for him most of the time. But sometimes when there was a lull in between, why, somebody else would want us, so we'd go over to the other farm.

AI: What was the living condition like? What was the situation out there?

JM: You could tell us that, I think.

TI: That was a small, small cabin, actually, it was narrow, and not very long. And they had three-tiered bunk beds on either side with about a 2-foot walkway through the middle. And in the middle of the cabin they had a small stove and a kind of a makeshift kitchen sink, and that was it, no chairs or anything. I think we might have had a little table. Yeah. And the town was called Hooper. It was just maybe half an hour's drive outside of Ogden. Pretty close to Salt Lake City. And the other members of that group was Kenji Yoshino, Ted Matsushita, and Kay Yamaguchi.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.