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TI: And so how long did you work at Issei Memorial Building? I mean, how long...

JH: I think half of April, February, March and half of April.

TI: Okay, so quite a --

JH: And in between, this president would say, if you got stuff that's got to be taken care of at home, take care of it. And the truck I sold with the understanding that he takes me to the depot on the time of evacuation, that's understood, my new car, I stored it in a friend's house, or a garage. The horse -- this is funny -- this horse trader named Nicora, he sold it to me. And he says, "How much you want for your horse?" I says a hundred dollars. "Hundred dollars? Who's gonna buy it for a hundred dollars?" "It's alright. Then don't buy it." Well, he had this hakujin, I don't know, Portuguese or whatever, and so the question came up, "How're you gonna put the collar on?" And I said, "You give me a hundred dollars, I'll put the collar on." Well, this guy that was gonna buy it, he tried to get the collar on and horse would raise (its head). I said, "Give me a hundred dollars, I'll put the collar on." Okay, he gave the hundred dollars. I took a small pebble and I banged him in the rump, he comes on like [leans forward]. I had him trained, so I got a hundred dollars for that. Then the tractor, I paid a hundred and fifty for it and I got a hundred and fifty for that. It was a charm I was lucky.

TI: How did you do that? Everyone else had to take, like, pennies on the dollar for their things and you were able to get full price.

JH: I got what I wanted. Nobody "Jewed" me down.

TI: And how come? What did you do?

JH: Somebody liked me up there, I guess.

TI: So you were able to find someone who could --

JH: No, they came to my house.

TI: Interesting. But they were expecting to get a cheaper price, though, right?

JH: It didn't occur to me, honestly.

TI: Interesting.

JH: It didn't occur to me. The only thing, I gave the house away for nothing. But big deal. [Laughs] And then, let's see, what else was there? The new tractor, I got what I paid for that. I don't know when it was, latter part of April, Standard Oil, the guy that distributes gasoline -- in those days they set up fifty gallon drums and there's no meter or nothing, you got a five gallon can, put a funnel on the drum and dump it in. When it's full it's fifty gallons, well, a hundred fifty gallons. But this time a guy and the, the driver and a guy in a suit comes along, and he says, "I got to have those tanks for the war effort, but my driver brought good tanks, cheapies, but they won't leak." Said, "We're gonna transfer the gasoline into those cheapies and then when you run out you go down to the town and buy it from a gas station." Fine. A couple weeks later, PG&E comes along and another guy, technician and a guy in a suit, the technician goes, looks at the meter and says so far the charge is seven dollars and some odd cents. So the guy in the suit says, "If you pay that much, from then on your electricity is free." Good deal, nothing wrong with that. So that was alright, and pretty soon, a couple of days later a guy, neighbor, Buddhahead, comes and, "Hey, what did you do with your gasoline?" I says, "Why?" "You know what? They came to my place, they opened the spigot and dumped all the gas in the ground." I says, "No. They didn't do that to mine." He says, "Yeah, they did to mine. And they come and pulled the switch on the electricity and cut the wire and we had to sit in the dark." "I don't believe it." He says, "Yeah." Well, when you got a house full of kids certain things get skipped, so the big boss says, "You ain't gettin' this gas for nothing."

TI: So why the difference? I still don't understand why.

JH: I paid cash. Those guys put it on the book, put it on the book. What assurance is a guy gonna get his money when, when... I shouldn't say this, but so in my personal opinion, some of the, I wouldn't say all, but the people that had the big bucks, no problem. It's the families that was barely getting by.

TI: So they were on credit and they were...

JH: Exactly. A lot of guys, the landlord made 'em give a promissory note, "When I come back I'm gonna pay my rent back to you," all that kind of stuff. [Laughs] So I would say I was lucky.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.