<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Now how old were you when you started to work in the sawmills?

RN: I was about -- I didn't work in the sawmills too long, not even a full year -- about eighteen. 'Cause like I say, one time I was working in a sawmill and I had to come back into town to go back to my school in June for my, for my diploma. I got, I had a certificate which I gave, they gave me in February, certificate saying that I got enough credits to graduate, but I had to come back in June to get a diploma. Now there's no difference between a diploma and certificate, but I was at the sawmill and I had to come back in June to get my diploma. But I told my Japanese foreman, he said, "No, if you quit today and go back to get diploma you won't have a job when you come back." So I said, well, in that case I'll stay here and work then. So I got a certificate, but I never got a diploma because that guy said, "If you leave your job today for two or three days you won't have a job when you come back." So those days if you work in the sawmill, and I worked in the sawmill -- I worked in a logging camp above that before, but I worked in the sawmill a very short time. About three months, that's all I worked. I quit anyway to go back to school.

MN: So you don't have your high school diploma. You just have a certificate.

RN: That's all.

MN: Now, you also went to Alaska to work in the canneries.

RN: Yeah.

MN: When did you go?

RN: Huh?

MN: When did you go, after school or --

RN: Where?

MN: When, were you still going to school at the time?

RN: Senior year I did, but most of the time, well, I wasn't, when I was in high school, because the school kids, when you're in school, high school age, you work in the canneries, the timing is just right. You can work in the canneries at that time in time to go after, after summer school, or you know what I mean. We'd quit and you can come back in September in time to go back to school. Now, when you go work in the salmon canneries those canneries are located all along -- if you got a map I'll show you -- all the way from the Gulf of Alaska all the way down to the Canadian border, so you don't know where you're gonna go work. And see, the salmon fishing up there begins up in Nome, way back in April it starts. Then it gets, work for the south, you work, come work down close to the Canadian border with the pink salmon. But a lot of people think it just, it's just... it's very complicated. It's not complicated; it's the laws. The fishing season, canning season, it only lasts about five weeks, that's all. And you work in the salmon canneries at the most two or three months, that's all, just there in the school vacation time. That's why it's ideal to work in the canneries in the summertime and come back there and go back to school. That's why it was ideal for a lot of guys going to the University of Washington, 'cause school lets off, say, in June and, depending on where you go to work in the canneries, you go and you work the canneries five or six months in a, five or six weeks during the summer, you come back maybe middle of August or end of September just in time to go back to college. When you come back you get paid. You got four or five hundred or six hundred in your hand. That's why a lot of those Japanese students, they'd go to canneries and they'd pay, it paid for their college education. Yeah, boy, you got four or five hundred bucks in your hand, cash. That takes you quite a time in those days, during the Depression days. And you'd get paid, go in the back, they pay you one time. Oh man, I got, most I ever got was about five hundred dollars 'cause I used to go a very short time, but they give you in cash.

MN: So you did this senior, senior year in, while you were in Franklin High School. And then you mentioned that you made all city.

RN: Huh?

MN: You said you made all city in high school?

RN: Yeah, high school I made, playing football I made, I made all city two years in a row.

MN: Were your brother and father athletic also?

RN: No. My brother played a little bit, but not much.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.