<Begin Segment 23>

SY: And then when you got to Chicago, why did you go to Chicago?

FO: Well, that's where Hide's family was. So from there, I went to Seabrook.

SY: Wow.

FO: I stayed overnight in Chicago.

SY: And now you, so you didn't stay there long, but you went to Seabrook to visit your family?

FO: Yeah. So I stayed in Seabrook for three months. And my older brother was there, he had come back earlier.

SY: So you both made it out of the army. So can you just describe what Seabrook is?

FO: Seabrook is... Mr. Seabrook had thirty thousand acres under his control in New Jersey. And he wanted farmers, he hired farmers to farm this big acreage. But he knew the Japanese were good farmers, so he went out and recruited all these people, all the farmers, to come to Seabrook, and they grew vegetables and spinach and celery and stuff.

SY: So he actually went into the camps to recruit these Japanese. And so there were people there from all...

FO: All the camps were there.

SY: They're represented there.

FO: Yeah.

SY: And when did your family end up there?

FO: When I was in the army, before I went overseas, the family went to Seabrook. Because on my last leave, I went to Seabrook to see them.

SY: So they had already been there.

FO: Yeah, they had already been there.

SY: And your father worked as a laborer, kind of?

FO: Well, he has a bad hand. So at first he worked in the plant, but it was too much for him. He was a fat guy. Five-eight, weighed two hundred and fifty pounds or something like that.

SY: His hand was...

FO: Yeah, his hand was crippled in an auto accident before the war. So they put him in charge of the young kids, so he ran the rec room for the young kids. And my mother was in the... she was in the, what do you call it? Snack bar area. And all the guys that used to come through Seabrook had to go through the snack bar area. And after, they all come back, they all meet and talk and shoot the breeze. So my mother knew a lot of the stories, better than some of the families. So when George and I got there, George was there before me, and he saw this girl, Michi Weglyn. She was Michi Nishimura at that time. And he and his friends introduced themselves to her, 'cause she worked in the plant as a secretary. So they went to New York and everything, Washington, D.C., before I got home.

SY: Michi did, and George stayed friends with her after the...

FO: Yeah. Kind of, I don't know.

SY: But he went to New York, too? Your brother went to New York?

FO: Yeah. And then when I got home, my brother and I and somebody else, we went to New York to see some friends, Washington, D.C. And that's where I met Terry Hokoda. You know Terry? She was a Nisei queen later on. That's how we got to know her.

SY: So a lot of people from Seabrook ended up going to the East Coast.

FO: Yeah, they stayed. Those that stayed, they went, they settled in D.C. or Philly or New York area.

SY: And do you think that this was a good experience for your family?

FO: Yeah, you couldn't get into trouble. There was no fence around the village. You could go swimming, they had lakes, and you could go fishing and stuff like that. So it was a good life for these young kids.

SY: And was it a lot of, a lot of work? Were they being exploited at all, do you think?

FO: No, no. I don't think they were being exploited. But I worked there for three months before I left, and they were, they were experimenting with the frozen industry. Mr. Seabrook and Mr. Birdseye, who was a scientist I heard, they were experimenting with frozen food, so they had all these machineries to freeze all that food. And the farmers would bring... the products would come into the factory and the factory would wash it and package it, and then it would go into the freezer. So it was an instant freeze stuff. So I worked in the freezing part. But all the -- I shouldn't say all -- but the majority of the food went to Europe, because Europe was starving, and it was sent over, as far as I understand, it was sent under the Marshall Plan.

SY: So he was producing food for the, kind of war effort, too. And was that when... did they send it somehow frozen?

FO: Yeah, they had equipment that instantly freezes. You leave the tray, the package in this freezing compartment for, what, twenty minutes, and it comes out frozen. I don't know whether you know the Birdseye (frozen food).

SY: Brand?

FO: ...frozen food brand?

SY: Uh-huh, I do.

FO: Well, it was started over there.

SY: And it was a man named Birdseye.

FO: Yeah. That's what I understand.

SY: And so what was your job, specifically? What did you do when you were there?

FO: I loaded berries into the freezer. They would wash it, package it, and then it would come to me and I put it in a big tray and then put it into the freezer.

SY: And you would work, what, eight hours a day?

FO: Eight hours a day.

SY: So you had time at night and it was a pretty regular job. And did you ever meet Mr. Seabrook?

FO: No.

SY: But you knew he was...

FO: Yeah, he was around. On the fiftieth anniversary I went back to Seabrook to thank everybody for taking care of my family. And I met Mr. Seabrook the second, or the son, anyway. I met him and I thanked him for everything that they did.

SY: Uh-huh. So it was a really very, you think it was a very good experience for the Japanese Americans that they had a place.

FO: Yeah. Because there was Jamaicans and Lithuanians and everybody. Most of the Japanese lived in the little apartment, so to speak, but many of the other people lived on the outside. And they had the regular homes and stuff like that.

SY: I see. So they didn't necessarily have to live in this little apartment.

FO: No.

SY: But they got paid decent wages? And you got paid to do the three months of work.

FO: Yeah.

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