<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So you mentioned, like a sugar beet farm, it's only once a year, and then in the summer you helped with some of the --

MK: Other.

TI: -- farms. So when winter came, what would you do then?

MK: Well then, when winter came you get snowed under, and there was snow on the ground until April. So we got the, I think it was my brother, went and got permission to go to town, and so we all went out to, and there's a Greyhound bus that goes into town, so we would go on the Greyhound bus. Well, my sister got married and she got to move to town, so I got to go to her house, and we went to work, I went to work in a sewing factory. And I worked, both my sister and I, we both worked in the... but all that I made, I mean, it went to the family. So my, so I worked, at night I would, two or three nights I would clean offices, and then on Saturday afternoon I would go and work at a lampshade factory. So Sunday was only the day off that I had, and even at that, you're lucky if we made fifteen dollars all week. But I guess it must've went far, so that, so that we, 'cause I had three younger (siblings), a younger sister and two brothers that my mother and, we had to support. So we all went to work.

TI: Okay. So then what happened in Winnipeg?

[Interruption]

MK: Well, all the girls, from the outlying (farms), they all went to work at the wealthy, wealthy Winnipeg homes that they... and I think they made fifteen dollars a month or something too, but they all went to work as housemaids.

TI: And they got to live there also?

MK: Yes, and they liked them. And Thursday was maids' day off, so every Thursday -- well, the fellows would all, would work at the arbiter or wherever they worked, and they all stayed at what they call the Frontenac, the hotel. And the girls would come in on Thursday and then, well, where would they go? They all went to the lobby of the Frontenac, and it didn't really look too good, you know? So we, my girlfriend and I, she was going to school and the two of us went down the YW and asked them, "Could we have a meeting room on Thursday so that the girls could, we could have a club meeting?" The lady there was very, very nice and so she arranged it and we had, we made a club called Niseiettes. And we, all the girls would come there, and then the fellows would come there. It was really, didn't look so bad. So that was our, we used to go roller skating and dancing and whatever it was.

TI: When the group got together like that, did you ever talk about maybe later on going back to British Columbia?

MK: No.

TI: Or did you ever talk --

MK: Well, there was no sense. All our farms, I mean, all our places were sold. We had nothing to go back to.

TI: Were, then, some people talking about maybe going more east?

MK: That's right, everybody's going east.

TI: To like Toronto, a place like that?

MK: Yeah. I was, if I did not marry, or if I didn't meet Robert, that's where I was going. I was gonna go to Toronto. I mean, that's the only place you could really get ahead, so I was already planning on going to -- my sister, they went to Quebec and so we, everybody was moving east.

TI: So really, for the Japanese American community, it was just go east because that's...

MK: That's right, 'cause Toronto has the biggest amount of Japanese.

TI: Right. And yet... well let's, we'll get there later. Let's keep, let's keep talking.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.