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TI: Now when you worked in shops like this, I tend to think of these areas as kind of blue collar. Did you face discrimination or prejudice in these shops when you first would go there?

TO: Not as the other mechanics or machinists in the shop itself. But after you got some experience with the fire equipment, working in the shops, then they send you out and service fire trucks in the stations, which I did. But it was very cold. Some of the guys were very cold towards me, and I assume they were veterans from the Pacific. Because at that time, almost everyone was veterans because they asked the guys, old timers to stay in the fire department until war was over. So that was a big influx of younger guys like me that were veterans. But they didn't know I was a veteran. But then they found out that, the word got around, "Oh, he was part of the 442." And then they got real friendly, and it was a wonderful experience. I still have lots of good friends in the fire department, of course, they're all passing away like my Nisei friends. But yeah, it was a wonderful experience. They played jokes on me, and we used to have a good time.

TI: What would be an example of a joke that they -- I'm thinking this is out in the station or something?

TO: Yeah.

TI: So what would be a joke that they would play?

TO: Oh, you know, I had to change the oil in the trucks. And the trucks, you have to, you can't keep 'em out of service too long, they gotta be ready to go all the time. Change the oil, you take it out of service, and tell the operator that it's going to be out of service for... and you want to get it back into service as soon as possible, so you crawl under the truck, and big pan, because it took five gallons of oil to change the oil in those. And so you'd take, put the plug back in and pulled the pan out, then get up on top and start putting oil in the engine. And then you step back, and one of the guys took that big oil pan right where I was gonna step. [Laughs] Of course, I stepped right into it. But anyway, that was some of the things that they used to play. But it was all in good fun, it wasn't because of a racial thing. Well, they did that kind of thing to each other. The firemen have a lot of time to think about doing different things. So it was a wonderful experience in working with those guys. And you know, firefighters have a little different attitude towards life. They're different kind of men. The reason I say this is because later on I became the supervisor of a fire garage. And the new fire garage down here on Ninth and Dearborn, we had lots of room in there, so they didn't know where they wanted to service the police motorcycles, so they assigned that to my shop. So we were maintaining the police motorcycles. But you know, the cops would come in and they'd sit around having a cup of coffee or something while they're waiting there for whatever minor repairs. But you get a feeling those guys are a little different than the firefighters.

TI: So how would you compare firefighters with policemen? What were some of the differences?

TO: Well, I think the firefighters were a little bit more kinder. They're... and I guess as a police officer, you just become that way, the kind of people that you had to contend with, making arrests and things like that. Well, firemen, they're out to save and help people. So I think it just kind of grows on you, and that goes through the whole department, that it's a different atmosphere. And I can understand that, I'm not putting down the cops, but that just comes with the territory, so to speak. When you have to deal with drunks, and people that are just not easy to deal with. The firemen there, they're always the heroes, they're never the bad guys, and the cops are the bad guys, you know. So that's, that's the feeling I see.

TI: That makes sense. Any other stories about your work with the fire department that you want to share?

TO: Oh, yes. This area right here, this was... when was it? I guess that must have been the '70s, when black citizens burnt a lot of places down like they did in Watts, and this area, they burnt a lot of buildings down. And they had, since I lived in the Central Area, so to speak, they had assigned territories. So whenever there was a big, big fire, they'd sent a mechanic out to make sure that the equipment was running okay. So they'd call me and said, "We got a big fire up in Twenty-third and Jackson or Yesler or something and I'd go up there. That time, they were shooting at the city employees, shooting at cops, shooting at firemen, and I'd be walking around there at nighttime in the dark going from one fire truck to another to make sure that everything was running okay. I had chills up my spine, you know, that somebody was going to shoot me. At that time, we had to put shields around the windshields of the fire trucks, big, think, plastic. There wasn't anything bulletproof in those days. Around the station at Twenty-third and Jackson -- I mean, Twenty-third and Yesler, that Station 6, they put the big, thick stainless steel on all the windows. And so that was kind of the situation, and so that was my experience in servicing the trucks when they were, had the big fires in the Central Area here. So that was quite an experience. I had no problems, but I was scared, though. [Laughs]

TI: And, Tosh, how long did you work with the fire department?

TO: Thirty-two years.

TI: And so when did you start?

TO: 1953, May of 1953.

TI: So you went through about 1985?

TO: Yeah.

TI: And when you retired after thirty-two years, what kind of ceremony did you have?

TO: I told 'em I didn't want anything. They gave me a badge, because being a civilian, you don't normally get a badge. Firefighters all have a badge, but being a civilian employee, you don't get a badge, but they awarded me a badge. And the chief and some of the higher-ups, they took me out to lunch. But I told them I didn't want anything, I didn't want a big party or anything. I just enjoyed what I did and I didn't want them to go through that.

TI: As a retired employee of the fire department, are there any perks that you get? Do you still stay in contact with the fire --

TO: Oh, yes, definitely. We have lunch the last Friday or every month out in Renton. Well, this, you have to understand, the fire department is probably nine hundred to a thousand men, nine hundred men that work in different areas of town. If you worked in a particular battalion, those guys get together. So there's various groups that get together, but for some reason, I go out to lunch with the guys that worked in the south end here. Because, not that I was any closer to them, but I just... I don't know.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.