<Begin Segment 15>

MN: So what were your responsibilities when you started at the Rafu?

TN: I was supposed to make display ads. That was not computerized. I had to actually get, pick type. The big type, we'd just pick it by hand to set a line, headlines and stuff.

MN: What were the types made out of?

TN: Lead, very heavy. And some of the pictures, advertiser would send us mats or something and then we'd have to make pictures on top of lead blocks, then I would have to cut the lead blocks on the saw into little pieces to fit in the, within the borders of the display ads. Then put the typeset words around it, and the smaller type, then we'd type that in the linotype machine, and they'd go at the bottom of something, then you'd have to put a border around the whole thing and put it on the page.

MN: So a lot of us don't know what a linotype machine is.

TN: It's a hot metal typesetting machine where... there was a keyboard at the bottom, and the operator would type out the letters, and the letters, mats would come down from the magazine on top of the machine to form the line. Typesetter would... typeset one line at a time, and then first the mats would come down, then if the line was made, pull a lever, and it would send the line up to the top, and another arm would send it down into the lead pot, I think. It was a mold, so it would make a lead line out of that and then the type would go back to the magazine. Do that with each line.

MN: So you're dealing with hot lead.

TN: Very hot lead, five hundred degrees or more.

MN: Did you ever get burned?

TN: Yeah, but not too bad. I made sure I wore long sleeves and long pants, and maybe a couple times I got really little pieces of lead falling on me, but then I would just run over to the aloe plant that Johnny Yamamoto, he filled in later, he had brought it in, so just squeezed the juice out of it and put it on the burn, and that would fix it. Johnny was always thinking.

MN: Sounds like a really dangerous job.

TN: Some people got burned pretty bad. Sometimes the machine would jam up, and it will squirt hot lead. I think Joe Yamada got pretty bad burns on his arm or shoulder or somewhere, so did Juan, he got it on his foot 'cause he wasn't wearing shoes.

MN: So these are all the... this is how the newspaper, the letters on the newspaper were all made before computers?

TN: Yeah, before 1981 or '82. Just one line at a time. You type it out, send it down the machine, it'll come back up.

MN: And then I guess you have to wait for the mold to get cool, the lead to cool down?

TN: It would get cool pretty fast. It would send the line back down to the tray, and while it's waiting in the tray for the other lines, it'll get cool or fairly cool. Cool enough so that you could pick it up without burning your hands off.

MN: And then once the mold was made, what did you do with it?

TN: It would get... by the time it came up, the lead would be off of it.

MN: Then you would carry that...

TN: So that would go back to the magazine, and it would drop it into their designated spaces. And the space band would go into its designated space. Only it's been so long ago since I used it, I don't remember exactly what happened. That was thirty years ago.

MN: And how heavy were these lead ingots that melted?

TN: Oh, they would come pretty big, you could weight lift with them, which some people did, just messing around.

MN: Well, I remember when I was there, it was used for doorstops.

TN: Oh, yeah.

MN: Those were pretty heavy. I don't know how many pounds they were.

TN: I don't know. Fifteen pounds, I don't know what it was.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.