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MN: Now I want to ask you about the strike, the farm strike at Tule Lake. In the fall of 1943, Tule Lake had a farm strike, and a group from Heart Mountain went out. Were you part of that group?

JK: Yes. We had another brother-in-law who was from Gila. Evidently had had problems in Gila over "yes-yes," "yes-no" questions.

MN: Is this Nobu Kawai?

JK: Yes. And so, well, we were working, somehow we all worked together. We had a timekeeper, foreman, so we all got together to work, peace time, we had arguments. So, when the Tule Lake people, farmers, went on a strike, we as a group said, "Hey, we could farm, farm the crops." And so, hey, let's do it. So we took off to Tule Lake.

[Interruption]

MN: -- you going to Tule Lake with the group from Heart Mountain. Do you remember how you got there?

JK: Of course. Now that we are select company, we had the best seats. I can remember going from Heart Mountain to Portland. Portland was for, time for us to eat. And what made it for some of us worthwhile, because now we were making the public wait for us. We were in the dining room, armed guards watching the door, and all of us snickering because now the public was being shut out. And some of us were laughing because now we had the upper hand. But, well, then we were also going to do lot of work, too.

MN: Do you remember, was this an American restaurant?

JK: Yes. It was part of the restaurant at the station. So the armed guards were keeping the public out.

MN: So you had a nice, you had the entire restaurant to yourself.

JK: Yes.

MN: And then from there they sent you to, I guess, Klamath Falls?

JK: Well, we still rode on a train to get to California, and it was a short ride because Tule Lake is way up there.

MN: So when you got there, how big was the group, by the way?

JK: Oh, gee, I would say twenty, thirty people. Gosh... yes, twenty or thirty people, and most of them were people that we had been working with in Heart Mountain.

MN: Were they all men?

JK: Yes.

MN: So once you got to Tule Lake, where did you live?

JK: We were camped in a... one of those camps for, not the evacuation camp, camp site, but... 'cause, see, like, oh, I've forgotten the name of the camps that houses...

MN: There was a Tule Lake CCC camp nearby, is that where you went?

JK: I think that was a CCC camp.

MN: A Civilian Conservation Corps camp.

JK: Yes, that's probably what it was. Because we had freedom after work to do other things like sightseeing, peeking in on Tule Lake from outside.

MN: 'Cause you were not in the Tule Lake camp, right?

JK: No, no.

MN: Did you know why the Tule Lake people were striking?

JK: Well, no, not really. Because it was a shame because the crops were plentiful. Any farmer would be glad to raise crops that were raised there. And we had fun, too. It was fun for us because we had fog, we had all those geese and ducks and whatever, other farms. Because there was a game reserve there. And on weekends, the public came out to shoot the game, and when they shot them, they would fall wounded in, back in our camp. And so we had extra ducks and geese to eat besides our regular food.

MN: What was your regular food?

JK: Japanese-style okazu. We had lots of vegetables. So it was almost like home.

MN: Who cooked for you guys?

JK: Someone attached to the... I guess they had picked some cooks for the... yeah.

MN: Now, compared to the work that you did with the sugar beets in Idaho Falls, how would you compare that work to the work you did at Tule Lake?

JK: Well, Tule Lake was more relaxed because, for one thing, other produce that we pick at night were loaded in boxcars to send to Heart Mountain, Tule Lake, or Manzanar camps, that's dependent on the food supply. So it was gratifying for us to feed ourselves, our families, our friends.

MN: Did you say that you were picking at night?

JK: We were free at night. Aside from the work, we were in a tent, living in a tent, oh, I don't know, half a dozen. And we had all the blankets, I'm telling you, the blankets got heavy because we got cold. So we had fun and we supplied the food for our friends. So it was something we needed to do.

MN: So there was a group from Heart Mountain. Do you remember what other camps people were coming from to help?

JK: I heard Manzanar was there, but I really didn't see any friends there.

MN: Were you allowed to go into the Tule Lake camp at all?

JK: No, no, but we were sightseeing from our side. There was a hill where we could peek in.

MN: Are you talking about Castle Rock?

JK: Someplace.

MN: Did you climb up that Castle Rock?

JK: We were up there someplace.

MN: That's pretty high. How long were you out there at Tule Lake?

JK: I remember playing around with that cabbage that was sold, big, better than any cabbage that I saw in the markets. [Laughs] But, yes, it was a very rich soil where we were.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.