<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So after you spend the winter in Chicago, what do you do next?

GN: Well, in order to have some kind of an income, I decided to use the GI Bill and go to a trade school.

TI: And so this is Chicago?

GN: Yes, in Chicago.

TI: So what kind of trade school?

GN: I went to a trade school to learn, I was going to learn body and fender, but I ended up mainly learning how to weld, you know, work with metal. And that really helped. I did all the cutting and the welding, bringing the cannery up to standard. We'd run the cannery during the day and have supper and go back and do repair work so it'll run the next day.

TI: So if you learn kind of this trade in welding in Chicago, you could do that in any city. Why'd you come back to South Bend?

GN: Because the people that had interest in the company and had families were loading the oysters onto a big GI truck, and hauling it to Seattle, and they had an opening out in Columbia city, and to give work to all the Japanese people who used to work here formerly, that was afraid to come back here. So they were waiting for Kuni Sasaki and myself to come back here and join the union. We used to be union members before the war.

TI: And so let me make sure I understand. So this is after the war, in South Bend it was hard for the Japanese families to come back here.

GN: They didn't want to come back here.

TI: Because they were afraid of how they would be treated?

GN: Yeah.

TI: So they wanted you and Kuni to come back first because you were union members. Because it was the union that was kind of the hardest one to, I guess...

GN: They were the most vocal ones.

TI: So they approached you personally, said, "Giro, will you go back first?"

GN: Yeah, yeah. They said they wanted us to, Kuni and myself to live here. So we came back.

TI: So before you decided to do that, what did you think? Because it's kind of like going into a hornet's nest, right? You're going to a place where maybe people didn't want you?

GN: I wasn't really afraid of that.

TI: Because you knew the people here, you thought it would be okay?

GN: Well, I was pretty sure we could take care of ourselves. We weren't worried about that. And we didn't have any trouble, except one night, there was three of us living in the house there. One night, somebody came in here with a pickup, and went just a little ways down the road and fired two shots over the house. It woke the other two guys up, but it didn't even wake me up.

TI: So did you ever find out who that was?

GN: Never did find out.

TI: Do you have a... do you think it was someone from the town or nearby that did that?

GN: I supposed it was some rednecks that live around here. They had to know we lived here. They knew we were living there.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.