<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So going to Heart Mountain, you said it was cold. What other memories do you have of Heart Mountain?

TO: I don't really... it's kind of a shame. I went through all that and I just don't remember anything. And maybe we just, it was such a shameful time that we didn't want to remember those things or whatever, but yeah. I remember shortly after we got there, I felt that I needed to go out of the camp. And there was a sawmill up above Cody, Wyoming, in a national forest up there and there's a little dinky sawmill, mom and pop type of sawmill. And those Issei men that, I think they were all Issei except me, they wanted a Nisei to go with them. I said, "Okay," because of the possibility of communication problems or whatever. So I went along with them, I think there was five Issei, and I was a Nisei. And we were logging up there all year around, and in the wintertime, it would snow up to hip-deep. It was kind of a fun thing. [Laughs]

TI: But that was a big difference for you. I mean, you grew up in the Northwest and there wasn't really, I mean, we get snow a few times a year maybe, but it doesn't stick around.

TO: But you didn't work in the snow. Of course, that wasn't too often. Because when we run out of logs to saw in the sawmill, then they'd send us up. He tried to bring as many logs down in the summertime when it didn't snow. And it was very interesting because the Forest Service had marked the trees that this owner could cut down, you know, and then we'd go up there and cut those trees down. But the owner would see a nice tree and he said, "Oh, that one is marked." We didn't see any marks on it. [Laughs] We cut 'em down. And because of the Forest Service, those logs had to be cut up and the horse would drag them out to a landing. We had a horse, there was a young hakujin kid that kind of towed the, logged all the wood. Because the Forest Service wouldn't allow them, allow tractors up there to do that kind of thing.

TI: And how was this time for you? Because you were the only Nisei with, what, five Isseis. How was that for you?

TO: It was kind of interesting. They were almost like my father, and I'd ask them different things, but I can specifically recall this owner's wife did all the cooking and she had two kids, you know. And I guess she was home teaching because there wasn't any school up there. They were way, way up in the woods there. But he'd go out and shoot a deer, and man, we had venison almost every night. And there was a lot of matsutake around there. And this Issei says, "Tell that lady that you can, that these are really good to eat, and if you cut it up and cook it with some venison, it'd be a real treat." And she was, this lady, she wasn't very comfortable in doing that. Anyway, I think we finally, I think he says, "If you put some silver in there while you're cooking it and the silver doesn't turn black, why, it should be okay." I don't know if that was the truth or not, but that's what they told me to tell her. So I told her and then says, "Okay. We're not going to eat it, but you people, we can all eat together," you know, the owner, she did cook it. And there was lots of matsutake. We ate quite a bit of matsutake up there, you know, and some of the Issei would show her how to cook it. But there was no shoyu or anything. [Laughs] But that was one particular incident that I recall.

But these guys were very... being a Nisei, and I was like their son, you know. They really looked after me. Of course, there was nothing that -- you couldn't get in any trouble anyway because there's nothing around there. There's no stores or anything, it was really, really out in the woods there.

TI: And when you said they were kind of like your father in terms of age, by being around these other Issei men, did you hear or learn anything different than you might have from your father? Like maybe a different perspective on Japanese culture or anything like that from these...

TO: It's interesting, these guys, I can understand enough Japanese to know what they're saying, talking among themselves, and they'd be talking about sex. And my father, of course, never talked anything about that. But that was one thing I definitely recall. But since I was Nisei and I could drive, I would drive the truck down into Powell, Wyoming, to the lumberyard in the summertime. That was fun. And I'd go right by the camp, you know, and I never went in the camp because, of course, we had to get there. It was kind of a long drive from where we were above Cody in a windy logging road down to the main road and then driving up to Powell to unload this lumber.

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