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TI: And so when you got to Tule Lake, tell me what that was like. What was Tule Lake like?

EY: Tule Lake? Well, I think we were one of the early ones, early volunteers were there, but we were right after that. And it was a new experience, we didn't know whether it was good or bad or in between. But we did find, we did find that we had time to get used to the conditions or situations there. And it was a new experience as it was for everybody else.

TI: So at Tule Lake, did you have a job?

EY: I was a fireman. Fireman, you know, you work a twenty-four hour shift. And so in a week, we'd just work a couple days, we'd sleep and eat. And so we were there, early ones, we were able to get something like that.

TI: And did you ever have a fire to fight?

EY: During my stay was just one fire that we went to, and that was, the chicken farm had a brooder, and that's what burned.

TI: And so tell me how that worked. Were you guys trained to fight a fire?

EY: Yeah, we had some kind of training, but the training wasn't much of anything special.

TI: And so what did you do all day? When you were firemen, you had to be there for twenty-four hours for a couple days. What type of things did you do?

EY: Well, we had first aid instruction. So we had a girl by the name of Ruby that was teaching us first aid. And everybody... well, they didn't have much of anything to do besides that, you know, and so we had a lot of time. But... so they planned some things and they, so they gave me the honor of asking Ruby, our first aid instructor, for a dance date, you know. And I was green as green can be, and I didn't know what to do. But anyway, that was the appointment. So our driver escorted us to it. But the most embarrassing part of it was that I asked her, and that was okay, but that was it. Because I wasn't much at dancing, so... and so I invited a reputation of being green, green, green, and so the next day, everybody was saying our crew was the green. [Laughs] But nobody blamed me, though. I had a tough time living that down.

TI: Now the other members of your crew, where did they come from? The other firefighters, where did they live? Where did they come from?

EY: Oh, I had a fellow firemen that was from around Port Townsend, from Clallam Bay, from the Olympic Peninsula. Then other than that, there were some people from Clarksburg, California, some farmers.

TI: On your days off, when you weren't at the fire station...

EY: Well, I was supposed to study. That was the whole idea of my being a fireman. You spend a couple days a week there, and then the rest of the time you have time off. And so... but it doesn't work that way. I didn't get much done, and what I did was I tried correspondence, but it was very difficult, because when you have a question, if you can get the answer right away, it's great. But by the time I get the answer, the answer became part of the mystery. It was so hard to follow. My wife is different, she graduated with correspondence, and amazing, amazing. She can be very proud.

TI: So what kind of correspondence courses were you taking?

EY: I thought I'd take up aeronautics.

TI: So that would be hard, yeah, you'd have lots of questions.

EY: I had lots of questions, but all the questions never got any answers until maybe a couple weeks later. And it doesn't click.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.