<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So in general, were the other Japanese, were they appreciative of the work you did?

JY: I don't think half knew what I was doing. I don't know if I ever told you the story, but the water, this canal water, we had almost 20,000 people living there. And the well system was made for 15,000 people, and it was part of our job to watch the water intake into the camp, the sewers, the excess sewers and power and so forth. Electricity was okay, we can manage it. But the sewer, we couldn't take care of that, so they built an extra sewer plant later, but we just flood, hundreds of acres was just flooded out there, raw sewer out there. And then in the meantime, but the water, the water was made for 15,000 people, then we had 5,000 extra people, says, "Boy, we got to do something real fast." So we decided to bring in the canal water. There's a canal not too far from the camp site, we dig a ditch and brought it into the camp. And meantime, I ordered one carload of pipes to bring the water underground, because the sand, water'd just disappear. So I had enough water, pipe from the pumping station into the camp, just got into the camp area, and then from there was an open ditch. Then I think about eighteen-inch pipe, just full blast, water coming out there. By the time we get down to the far end, we lose it all. So every day, I switch water from seven wards. First ward, second ward, third ward, fourth, and so forth. Seven ward, every, seven days a week, the water would be running.

Anyway, I met this guy one day, he had a restaurant in San Francisco, still has a restaurant in San Francisco. And he saw me, he says, "I know you." Says, "I don't know you. Who are you?" I asked him. Japanese guy. He says, "I was a little boy, and I made a boat, little boat with a sail, I was going to let my boat sail on the river there." And the water never came because he was on Ward 7, he was way out in nowhere. And then he really chewed me out. He was kidding, you know, like after we're all grown up, in front of everybody. There was a bunch of guys, we all laughed about it. "Yeah," said, "This darn guy didn't give me no water, there's no water here. Here I worked so hard to put the boat together," and so forth. But there it is, and I got to know him, he came to one of the pilgrimages. Until then, he was just bitter about camp. And he came to camp, talked about it, talked about it, and he talked to other people, this and that. It was a real closure for him. He said he felt so good after he went to the pilgrimage. He says, "You know, Jim," he says, "I was only" -- he had a pretty good restaurant, and he still has it in San Francisco. Was to go back to Japan, was so tied up in knots. This is about twenty, thirty years later, he just couldn't get over it. And finally there was a closure for him.

TI: Good. We're going to get back to the pilgrimage a little bit later, too, I want to ask more about that.

JY: Yeah, these guys, that's how --

TI: But just finishing up the water story, I want to make sure I understand. So you'd move it every day.

JY: Yeah.

TI: And it was an open ditch. What did people use the water for?

JY: For dust control and for irrigating a victory garden or something, the shrubs or trees and this and that. Otherwise it was just losing, I mean, the pumps were running twenty-four, we were using over a million water gallons a day, and that was about the maximum the pumps could take. And we couldn't take any more after that, and we shut the water pressure down with everything. But we had to maintain so much pressure to have the fire hydrant had to have as much pressure in the system, otherwise it would be useless. Because back then, they didn't have what they have today on fire trucks, big pumps that pump the water. Mostly it was, mostly gravity flow type of deal.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.