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TI: So can we talk about your job at Heart Mountain? What was it like being in the fire department? What did you have to do?

JH: That, that was a total lifetime in itself. You put in twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours off, and the toughest part is to try to keep the olive drab fire engine polished up. [Laughs] You had to, cloth and the rubbing, it won't shine, nothing to shine. But this, the title for the Caucasian chief is Fire Protection Officer (Glen Rumley). He's hired from Washington. Whereas a Nisei is the fire chief or whatever. And once I made the rank of assistant chief I was satisfied right, right there, so that's where I stayed for three years.

TI: Now, how many fires did you guys have to fight?

JH: We had two of 'em. One was in what they used to call a recreation hall, in other words, it's a multipurpose building. And the report came quite late, so the inside was all full of flame and fire was coming out of the window. We put it out. The only thing is we had to put new outside and inside. The woodwork was still good. Maybe a few places where it was hot had to be replaced, but the building was steady. And the other one that hit, the desk sergeant -- we called him the desk sergeant, he's on a control board, fourteen lights, designating each station and each geographical area where there's a call box. You just lift up the phone and automatically the alarm rings in the firehouse and the desk sergeant will answer. So this time it didn't come on the dispatch board; it came from the telephone. And this desk sergeant says, "Hayakawa-san, there's a fire in the military police officers' barracks." So away we went, and the Caucasian fire protection officer (Glen Rumley)was already there, and he says, "Tell your fellows to make a deluge gun," which is a two source of supply onto a fitting, and then it's fitted onto a, what they call a hard suction. It's a ten foot solid tube, and on the other end there's a two and a half inch nozzle. "Once the water comes out," he said, "tell 'em to hit the floor. Never mind the fire. Hit the floor." So from both sides, just waterfall cascades. Soon water started running out of the door. And I guess as things went along the fire protection officer says, "Okay, now tell your men to use," what they call a mystery nozzle. In other words, we're still flooding the floor, but there's a hundred fifty gallon reservoir in the truck. He said, "Use that to put the flames out." So we put the flames out, and then next thing -- this is twenty degrees below zeros -- next thing we have to do is disconnect all the hoses, roll it up and take it in, have to wash it, wash it and dry it. So some of the off-duty guys -- it's down the hill, I would say about, yeah, about a mile from our firehouse to the military police quarters, and from the firehouse to the camp proper is another two miles the other way -- they all ran to help roll up the hose. Well, not all of 'em, but... next morning he got all the officers together and we rode one truck -- not fire truck, auxiliary truck -- and you know what? It was so hot, the rifle was bent, some of 'em. And underneath the officers' bunk, live ammo, boxes and boxes of live ammo.

TI: So is that why they had you hit the floor?

JH: Hit the floor and flood it, keep it cool.

TI: I see.

JH: And no machine gun, just rifles. And I thought, oh man, we could've really loused it up if we weren't trained right. But boy, those guys worked like robots. I said, "Hey guys, assemble a deluge gun." "What's that, John?" I said, "I told ya." "Oh yeah, yeah." Boy, that, they got it going right, like right now. I was so... man, if that box of ammo took off... [laughs]

TI: Yeah, that'd be dangerous. So you had two fires in three years, so there must've been days where you didn't have much to do.

JH: Our company hit two big ones, and then the other incident was, again, we got a call from the military guardhouse down at the entrance. He says, "One of the towers is reporting smoke. Can you check it?" And I says, "Where is it?" He says number so-and-so. I said, "Don't tell me numbers because it's outside the fence. Geographically tell me where it is." It's the middle tower on the western border. Well, that's easy, so I got the captain, we drove, and he, captain pulls the barbed wire apart. I climb up the ladder, bright moonlight night, what they call a bomber's moon. You could see for miles. And he says, "You see that smoke over there?" I says, "Yeah, I see that smoke. That's not a fire." He says, "Oh?" I says yeah, the boiler man is told to, what they call, see, you bank the coals like this and cover it and just leave a little small flame burning for the rest of the night, and that smokes like crazy. And next morning he comes, he starts it up again, the whole pile goes. I said, "That's it." And I looked around, there's no machine gun there. I didn't see any sidearm. Maybe he had a sidearm, I don't know. So this, at least in Heart Mountain, this machine gun pointing at us, no.

TI: Now, when you were up there, what else did you see? Could you see the whole camp?

JH: Oh man, I never seen --

TI: Because you saw the bright moon and so it must've been quite a sight to see.

JH: You could see for miles. I could see the hospital chimney and all the streetlights. Gee.

TI: And so what did you think when you saw the whole camp like that?

JH: No time. I got to get back down. [Laughs] I wasn't a tourist.

TI: Okay. But going back, so you had two big fires in those three years, but so there must've been days when you had more free time, when you didn't have to do --

JH: Another company hit a fire in the mess hall, and I don't know what happened, but they thought it was out so they went back to the firehouse, and by golly, they got another call, the same mess hall was on fire. Well, they put that out and the next morning the fire protection officer called all of us and he says, "See here, fellows, this is where the fire started." And somebody put a cigarette butt and the butt, hot, full length, and it just kept crawling, crawling, and it then went up this celotex.

TI: Wow. Just one cigarette.

JH: One cigarette.

TI: Interesting.

JH: That's training. That's why he called us.

TI: As a fireman, how would you guys kind of wait? I mean, a lot of days you would just be waiting all day.

JH: No.

TI: No?

JH: No. We had a pool table there. We'd shoot pool, play poker, play shingoro, four, five, six. And there was one time, this small fire, the USO called, they had a fire. And one of the GIs thought that the stove was too full of ashes, so he scooped it up into a dust pan and he took it and threw it in the other half of the building. [Laughs]

TI: And so that started the fire.

JH: He thought it was ashes. Well, it's hot coals. By golly, the thing took off. [Laughs] But that, that wasn't a fire. It just, you could take a bucket of water and put it out.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.