<Begin Segment 26>

MN: Okay, so when we left, you were at Santa Anita going to Rohwer.

CH: Right.

MN: At Rohwer, what kind of job did you have?

CH: Rohwer? The only... the most jobs that was open for twelve dollars a month was a lumberjack. See, you need lumber because Arkansas, when it gets wintertime, it's cold, you know. But they got coal, but we used that oak tree lumber for... what kind of stove you call that? They got a name for that stove.

MN: Potbelly?

CH: The stove, you put the lumber in the stove and heat the room when it's cold. So lumberjack, you chop the wood.

MN: Potbelly, right?

CH: Arkansas and Jerome camp, it's a swamp. Lot of trees and lot of snake all over the place. We never saw a snake, you know. Which one is poison, we don't know. But, of course, there's a lot of people that come from the country. Like there was a guy living in, come from Nevada, so we used to call him "Rattlesnake Sam." He knew everything about snakes, so I used to follow that guy. You know what a timber rattler is? You know what a desert rattler is. A timber rattler is a big one like that, it's a long one. Big head like that. So you know, he used to hunt rattlers. He'd make a belt from the rattlesnake. So he used to hunt them. Then he used to sell that venom.

TI: Venom?

CH: Venom, venom. Go like that, bottle, get the thing, it come out, he used to sell the thing. People used to buy it for some kind of medicine. So I used to follow that guy. So he, sometimes he'd bring a snake and shove it in my eye, you get scared. Sometime you go dance and you know, there's a green snake like that, dancing away, I got something in my pocket, I go like that, "Yaahh." [Laughs] Well, of course, like us guys, in camp, they always talk about the camp, you got persecuted, this and that, and everything else. Us young guys, we had a lot of fun. Like the people come from Fresno or the San Joachim Valley, people in the Hood River, Oregon, people, and Imperial Valley people and the Glendale people, hey, they came to paradise when they was camp. Not under the hot sun. I told them, "You guys all taking vacation." I said this in the cultural center, I made a speech over there, you know, about "how you people getting along after the war." But if it wasn't for the war, hey, you'd be still locked up in the hot sun working on the farm. I know how it is working on a farm. I know how it is. Maybe that story come later.

MN: Oh, you worked on the commissary, too, right?

CH: Oh, lumberjack, yeah, lumberjack was too hard. So you know, I started thinking, "Where you gonna get the food? We got food distributing, everybody distributing. So I was thinking, I went to this place, the people, I ask 'em, "Hey, how about a job working in the commissary?" "Yeah, there's job open, work in the commissary." So I went to my friend, got a job. There was a couple more, that's why Terminal Island guys. Hiro and... Tad and Hiro. "Hey, you know why I got you the job?" "Huh?" You know what kind of guy I am, we're gonna steal. Dorobo. Those other guys are, all my age guy are all dumb. They never think about that kind of thing. I used to get rice. Rice and all the vegetable, I used to bring it home and cook it instead of going to the mess hall. I used go to like this, pea coat? Everybody would get pea coats and [inaudible] I get it for nothing. I had an itchy finger all the time. Why not? I told them, "Government put you in this kind of thing. We got to retaliate by doing something." So I used to get lumber to make something. But my father's so honest, said, "My son got that lumber, I don't know where he got it." The inspector come, and, "That's our lumber." But they're not gonna stick me in jail. They had a jail over there, but for a little thing like that? See, I was way ahead of the other guys. Other guys, they're doing this and something else. I had a bad attitude toward the government, anyway.

TI: But part of your attitude was, it seemed like, you felt like you were in camp unfairly, so you said, so why not, I guess. Is that what your, how you felt? Because the government put you there, you felt like you didn't owe the government anything?

CH: Nah. The government, why they put me in? I didn't have no animosity against the government. But the one that lost is the Issei people. I heard lot of stories about after the war, how much they lost. The farmer especially. Because it was a harvesting time, they got arrested. One of my Imperial Valley guy, the last load from Imperial Valley from, all the way to L.A., he was the last guy to bring the produce to that market over here. And all the rest, all lost. Oh, I heard a lot of that story, especially like us fisherman. My father used to own a boat, too, maybe the boat cost $15,000, that was a lot of money in that time. But since we couldn't, my father, he drink a lot and gamble too much, he lost the boat, 'cause he couldn't pay the rent. That's the way it goes. That was just a minor thing, but look at all the big farmers, they're the ones that should get more than $20,000. Not the guy who was born in camp. Born in camp you get $20,000 same as us? Oh, something wrong. Yeah, if I had something to say about it, I'd say something. But you know, they're other group. But when I testified I should have said that, but I said something else different against the government.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.