<Begin Segment 23>

MN: How long were you at Rohwer before you got a leave clearance to leave?

MY: We were there about six months and then we went to... about six of us signed up and went to work on the railroad in Kansas City. Not Kansas City but it's Wellsville, it's about fifteen miles from Kansas City. And we lived in one of these little boxcars, in the morning we'd get up, eat breakfast, they'd put us on a little trolley and we'd go out and fix the rails. Pretty much you just get like a small hedge hammer and you pound in these stakes... they'd come loose. That's what we did there, but I mean, we were there with about another six of us, I think, so it wasn't that bad. First few nights couldn't hardly sleep because trains go by right next to the track, but pretty soon you get so tired you just go to sleep. So we went there, we worked there for about six months and then we went back to Rohwer. Then we had this opportunity to go to Chicago. Well, it's not really Chicago, it's a nursery, Premier Rose Garden wanted some people to come work there so about the same six of us signed up and we went there.

MN: Now the six of you, were they including your brothers?

MY: No.

MN: What happened to your brothers? Did they stay in camp?

MY: Well, my older brother had volunteered for the army but my younger brother, he was still there with like Yukio and his brothers, so I went out by myself. He came out later with them.

MN: Did your older brother... did people in camp give him a bad time for volunteering?

MY: No, I don't think so. He just volunteered and before you know it he was gone. He volunteered for the 442nd and he was one of the original members I guess of that group. But I didn't want to go volunteer for the service then. I figured well, I got to look after my younger brother. So I went to Chicago, I figured I could go work there and make a few dollars and when he gets ready he can come out, 'cause he was still going to school then.

MN: So you went to the railroads, came back to Rohwer, then went to Premier Roses in Illinois?

MY: Yeah.

MN: What did you do at Premier Roses?

MY: Premier Rose Garden, they had about a dozen greenhouses. Then they assigned two of us to work with one of the persons that was more or less in charge, so we'd water all the plants, we'd fertilize the plants, we'd syringe the plants, you know they never sprayed the roses with fertilizer, I mean, spray to kill the bugs. It's like a spray you put on the end of a hose and you wash the under leaves and you put a raincoat and stuff on. He's on the other side, I'm on this side, we're washing but we would syringe they called it, and we'd wash all the roses but that was pretty much our job there. When you're first there, you don't go around just cut the rose and flowers, you have to learn how to... you can only cut 'em at a certain place and you have to be so long and you have to cut it in a place that the next bud can come out and things like that. First, before you even start to cut them, all these little buds, you pinch them off, you break them off so that another stem would come out and shoot up, it would make a longer stem. You know, they're looking for long stem roses, so that's what we did then. So we worked there for about, must have been about a year or so, then we heard that in Chicago if we went to Chicago we could make a few dollars more, so then we took off from Premier Rose Garden and went to Chicago.

MN: And this is when you met your father again?

MY: That's when I met my father. My father had come out from Poston and I couldn't believe it. My friend said, "I think your father's here." I said, "Oh." Didn't even think about it then. One day on the Elevated going east, he's on the other side going west. So I got off, went over and talked to him and asked him, "Dad where you going?" He's says, "I'm going to... I'm a maitre d' in one of the hotels," so he's going to go to work. Well, I went to work and the next day I came back, went down to see him, and he had taken off. He didn't want to have nothing to do with us so he went to New York and I never... see, that must have been '43, 1943.

MN: When that happened to you, how did you feel towards your father?

MY: I figured, well, that's okay. He can go his way I'll go mine. I mean, I can take care of myself, I don't need him. So I figured that was it. I figured well, I guess I'll never see my father again. But it didn't bother me in the fact that you lose a father or mother. Just that I never had one. So it didn't really bother me. It's just that if I never got married I would have never saw my father again. [Laughs] It's just my wife was so concerned that I have a father and he's out there by himself. But you know, as I think about it, 1950 when we got married, he was only fifty. And I think about it, fifty, gee, my kids are older than that. So he was well able to... 'cause when he came out in 1957 I had gotten married, I had been married already seven years. And I had done fairly well financially and so I had my own house, I had my own car, I had two kids, I had a good job. But I says, "You know, Hiroshi and Isao," I said, "Both of them don't have their own place, they're not really that well off," the older brother had a son that had problems physically, had to have operations and things. And I says, "It's not too late to help 'em." "Well," he says, "but I've been living with this lady for a lot of years. I can't just leave her." But I think to myself, I says, "Gee, you mean we don't mean that much to you?" Well, he went back to New York, and since my older brother was sort of like a mechanic, he wanted to start a garage and have a gas station and stuff. You know, Dad could have came out and helped him, but he chose to go back to New York. So I couldn't tell him, no, you can't do that. He's got his own life to live. But I sort of felt bad that he didn't want to help my two brothers. 'Cause after I got married, for me, life really turned around. I guess if it wasn't for my wife it would have been a lot different.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.