<Begin Segment 12>

MN: Now, you talked about going out of camp, how did you feel about leaving Topaz?

JD: I was somewhat saddened because we were not going, we were not returning to the Bay Area and all my, most of my friends returned to the Bay Area, but my mom and dad didn't come back because there was no jobs for them to come back to. My dad was a salesman for a Japanese export/import company, there was no such thing as that before the war, or after the war. My two sisters who were living in Chicago said there's nothing out there for him to do either in Chicago, and so we had this friend up in Idaho who said, "Well, if you want to come up to Idaho there's, there's jobs up here, but it is farming." So given those choices, my mom and dad decided okay, that was the best choice they had. So they went up to Weiser, Idaho, never farmed in their life, they were past fifty at the time, and they had to learn a new vocation all over at that age. And I have to tell you, they struggled for a good number of years, and I remember helping them out during the summer months. Because at school, when school was on we were not taken out of school, but in the summer months when most of the farming was done we were there to help out, and so I was only like, I was eleven when I left camp, so from eleven until I graduated from high school we, I had to go out and help them on the farm. We would help, there would be crews of people helping out all the farmers, potato farmers, onion farmers and whatnot, and when, when it was potato season time we would get up, like, two o'clock in the morning, have our breakfast, go out to the farm, which was, like, a few miles from where we were, and you would start picking the potatoes at, like around four o'clock in the morning. And people will, people have asked me, "How could you see at that hour?" Well, up, you're up in northern, the northern part of the United States and so the sun is, I mean, it's not real bright or anything, it is kind of dark, but you can see the potatoes because the potatoes are, with the machinery, are brought up to the surface, and so then you start picking the potatoes, and you could pick the potatoes in one of two methods. One was you had this barrel, was a wire basket which would hold approximately fifty pounds if you filled it, and then you put that over the mouth of the gunnysack and you flipped the basket over and potatoes would go in. Then you would pick the second basket and put that on top of the first one that you put in so it would make a hundred pounds. And we did that from the time we started 'til about eleven or so, and then you would quit because the sun would be too hot and you couldn't leave the potatoes out on the surface, otherwise it would bake. So you quit, you had lunch, and then you would go out and help the other farmers, what they call weeding, which was like when the onions were coming up you had to make sure that the onions were clear of any weeds so that the onions could grow and it wouldn't be suffocated by the weeds. So you did that for the rest of the day, so you had a long hour. You'd start like two o'clock in the morning when you got up, and you'd get home around six o'clock at night, and then you have just a few hours to sleep and you start the whole process again. And so my mom and dad had a very hard time, and I think that's probably why I don't like farming. I respect them, but I could not ever do it, knowing just what they have to go through. It was very, very difficult for them for so many years, and finally they were able to do a little bit better, but still they were already in their seventies and whatnot, and just hard for them. So once I graduated from high school I never went back. I went back to visit, but I didn't, I knew I was not gonna go back there to live.

MN: So did the war really change the life of your family financially?

JD: Yeah, I think it did. Yeah, from what we had in San Francisco compared to what we had to endure after the war, yeah, it did. My mom and dad really had to scrape for a good many years before they could actually come out and smell the roses, so to speak. And I would, when I went to Chicago after I graduated from high school, I went to school back in Chicago and took secretarial courses and I went and got a full time job, and because of the experience I had with them, with not having enough money all the time, I would send them home money. It would be like a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars back in 1952, '53 was a lot of money for an eighteen year old kid, but I would save my money, and it's because while I was going to school I lived with my sister, oldest sister who was married and, and then had her first child while I was living with her, and she didn't charge me any room and board while I was going to school, so I was able to save money and pay for my own schooling and then still have enough left over for me to send money home. But I was also working. I was working part time while I was going to secretarial school. I actually went to Northwestern University for my secretarial training 'cause the year that I went to Chicago there was a book publishing company called Houghton Mifflin or something like that, and they published all of the Gregg shorthand textbooks. Well, apparently there was a Gregg's School of Business, and I don't quite know what happened, but in that particular year the school was given to the Houghton Mifflin people, and the bookkeeper, I mean, the book publishers didn't want to be saddled with the business school so they offered it to Northwestern. And Northwestern said, "Yeah, I think we might like to do this," so I think Northwestern kept it on, the School of Business, they kept it on for a few years. But anyway, so that's where I went. So, but I was working at the same time, and so I could pay for my own schooling and I was able to send money home to my mom and dad.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.