<Begin Segment 27>

MN: -- in Kersey, Colorado and you're working for this German man. What kind of work did you do?

TY: He put me on driving the tractor and feeding the cattle. That was my job.

MN: But he had both a vegetable farm and a cattle farm?

TY: No, he had a sugar beet farm, farming sugar beets for Great Western Sugar Company, and then -- that's summertime -- and then the wintertime he used to feed cattle. He used to go to Texas, Oklahoma, to buy skinny cattle and used to ship 'em up to the Greeley, Colorado, to his corral and then feed 'em sugar beet leaves, tops, alfalfa and all that, and I used to help him in the cold winter, ten below zero, twenty below zero, to go to the beet factory to pick up the pulp and go out in the field to get alfalfa, hay to feed the cattle, and in the cold twenty degree weather. It was cold, man. And then I worked for him for one year, maybe two, yeah, two years in the wintertime. Summertime we came back home to work for -- wait now, two years in the wintertime, and then summertime, naturally, work on his farm. And then the other years we started our own farm 'cause we were farmers back here, you see.

MN: Before you started your own farm, that, the winters, did you work part time in Denver also?

TY: Yes.

MN: What'd you do in Denver?

TY: Well, summertime we worked up to October, October until it got cold and frozen, then went to Denver, got an apartment, and then we applied for a job at the packing, packing shed. And I didn't know that they do this, they told us if you want a job go to packing shed, so went over there and, like I said, I didn't know that they done this, but the produce house over there, shipping vegetables from Texas, Louisiana, all the southern states, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, they're shipping the produce to Denver and Denver is the middle point between Boston, New York or whatever, and then they repack 'em, and then they repack 'em and put ice in it, and then we would load the cars after puttin' ice in it and they would ship it on to New York, Boston or Chicago, wherever, Canada, wherever they cannot grow vegetables, fruits, so and so. And it was a good job, breaking, breaking the crates, taking all the vegetables out, repacking, reicing, load the trucks, long distance hauling trucks and the freight cars, in the wintertime, November, December, January, February, I think about four months. And then the ground would thaw out on the farm, so after March we'd go home and plow the ground and plant our crops.

MN: So while you were working in Denver did you visit the Denver Japantown?

TY: Oh yes.

MN: What did you do there?

TY: Shot pool all night. [Laughs] We slept over there, we stayed over there and went to the Kagohara Restaurant for food, and played pool all night long. And that's more or less what we did at nighttime.

MN: What about your parents? Where were they?

TY: They were in Greeley, Colorado, at the home. They were, my dad was about sixty-five, seventy, sixty-five, about sixty-five, so they stayed home and kept warm. Nobody would hire them and he didn't want to work.

MN: So while you were in Colorado, what were you hearing about people in camp?

TY: Ooh, bad news. People in camp used to fight. I didn't like it, but Denver Post, maybe they over-exaggerated, I don't know, Denver Post used to write bad things about people in the camp. They said they had fights, fights. All we really used to hear was they used to have fights, riots and more riots, and they're not behaving. Denver Post was really bad on Japanese people, and that's why, like Governor Carr, he was the governor at that time and he was so good to the Japanese people that a couple years later the election time came up and he didn't get no vote. It was bad. We felt sorry for the guy. He was a good, good governor to invite us over there and then they didn't give him no vote and they just voted him out of the office, which is bad.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.