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TI: So let's talk about Ontario, Oregon. So what was the connection to Ontario? Why were people going there?

KT: There was a guy named Shig Murakami, I don't know where he's from. He must've been from Bellevue or something. He, I don't know, there's a history behind him getting married to some gal and going to L.A. and then he ended up in Ontario, but he was a foreman for a potato rancher named Bybee and I guess he needed workers. So they had a house, his wife was cooking and then he was the foreman out in the field, and he would tell us what to do and she would cook our meals. And we'd pay, I forget what we were paying. But he, I guess he's the one that asked for these laborers to come to Oregon. That's why I went there.

TI: Now, was he getting workers from different camps, like Minidoka and Tule Lake, or just Tule Lake?

KT: As far as I know, it was just Tule Lake.

TI: Okay. And tell me about the work. Was it good work at the, at this farm?

KT: Sugar beet, he showed us a sugar beet farm and said, "We're gonna block beets." I said, "What's block beets?" He said, "You thin out, thin out the, every about eight inches you cut out and you leave one plant. Then you go a little bit like that and you leave another plant." They give you a little hoe -- a hoe's like that [holds up hands to show size], but the handle's cut off, so about so long -- and you bend over and you go down this row like this. So what do we get paid? We get six dollars a day, or you can contract labor and say, I forget what he said, thirteen dollars an acre or something. So I says, "I don't know, I'll just go by the day." And that first day I worked, worked, worked all the way; at the end of the day I couldn't stand up. So flipped the hoe and I sat on the hoe like that, and I just stayed there for I don't know long, 'cause my back was just like that. That was hard work. That's the hardest work I ever done.

TI: Now, why do they cut, make the hoes short? Why wouldn't they keep it long so you could stand up?

KT: Because you're closer to your work and you can really go fast cutting that. If it was long and the plant is down there you might cut some of the ones that you wanted to leave.

TI: So by being closer you could, you're closer, you could see better and do it. But then it's backbreaking work, then. You're just, you're stooped over all day.

KT: Yeah. The rest of the work was just regular farm work. You cut potatoes, and they harvest the potatoes, you got to buck 'em up, throw 'em on the truck, they're in sacks and you throw 'em on the truck and stuff like that. But that sugar beet was, that was hard work for me. I think that's why I need a cane now when I walk.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.