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TI: So tell me a little bit more about Selleck in terms of, you called it a sawmill. So what kind of logs would come in and what kind of things would...

TT: Well, Selleck had its own logging camp up in the hills. In fact, Selleck was the largest sawmill on the West Coast at that time. In fact there's a plaque there, even now, when you go up to the old Selleck school building, it's [inaudible], so it must have been. [Laughs]

TI: And do you know how many workers they had at the mill?

TT: I don't know.

TI: But it must have been probably hundreds of workers?

TT: Yeah. Another thing they had, most of the hakujin residents [inaudible], they were all connected. They worked in the coal mine.

TI: And so right next, or close by the sawmill, they had coal mining also out there? Because it's all in the same area. So you had coal mining and the sawmill?

TT: It was separate, but...

TI: Did very many Japanese work coal mining also?

TT: No.

TI: So why not? Why were they in the sawmill and not coal miners?

TT: Well, all those Japanese worked in the sawmill. [Laughs] Of course, more hakujin working in the sawmill, too. But then all those coal miners were hakujin.

TI: Going back to the sawmill, were there certain jobs that the Japanese did versus the Caucasians? Or were they all mixed up?

TT: Mixed up.

TI: So there weren't, there weren't some positions that you'd always see maybe a white worker and in some positions you might always see a Japanese worker.

TT: I don't know too much about it because I was young and don't pay attention that much. My dad, he was what you call an oiler, going along oiling and greasing all the machines, that was his job. He had a little shack.

TI: Was that viewed as one of the better jobs in terms of the sawmill or did you have...

TT: Oh, I think that's an easier job. [Laughs]

TI: You were telling me earlier, so at some point you moved from Selleck into Seattle. So why did the family move from Selleck to Seattle?

TT: The company went bankrupt, poor management, and it never started up again.

TI: And when you say poor management, why do you say that?

TT: Well, that's what I understand.

TI: Because there were still lots of logs and things like that for them to cut and things like that? So it wasn't like they ran out of logs or anything like that.

TT: No, they didn't run out. One thing I gathered was that they built a bridge up where the logging camp was. That was really, they spent too much money on that.

TI: So when the company goes bankrupt and you have lots of Japanese up there, where did the Japanese go? What did most families do?

TT: They dispersed from all over. Even before the mill went broke, some of the families got, couple of them I knew went down to California, one went down to Oregon. Most of them came to the Seattle area, I guess, more in the valley. They dispersed all over. And I was living, when I came to town, I was living on Sixteenth and Fir. That's the Garfield district.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.