<Begin Segment 23>

BK: So you were going to school?

JT: I was going to school...

BK: And this was your part time job.

JT: Yeah, and then worked in summertime, I worked in the mess hall. And then eventually, since we moved down to Block 6, then I think I went to work at the hospital. That's what it was. And I got a job at the hospital. I was first a tray girl and they have on these little pink uniforms, pink pinafores, I guess. And we took trays around to the patients in the hospital. And that was fine, I enjoyed that, too. And eventually then I got to know all the doctors and hung around the hospital a lot, so I got to become Dr. Akamatsu's secretary, doctor's secretary.

BK: And is this once you had graduated, that you became the secretary or was this also...

JT: Yeah, uh-huh. And see, Mits had graduated that year before me and then he left camp. He went out to work in, to work in the beet places, sugar beet farms, and bucking potatoes, and a lot of work. And so then I remained behind in school. But since I wanted to get out early, so that when he did come into camp, I could be with him, and just to hang out together. So I left school before graduation at that mid-term. You know how they could graduate early? So that's what I did. And I'm really sorry to this day that I didn't take part in the commencement exercises either, because we were out at that time. I can't remember if we were in Ogden or somewhere like that 'cause I went out to Ogden from camp, went out to Ogden on seasonal work. We went out and we did tomato plants. We didn't pick them, we processed them, we were in a tomato and a peach cannery. And that was okay, too, 'cause we lived in the city of Ogden. We had a room in the slum area, you might say, where rent wasn't quite so... probably wasn't the slum area, but was not the most desirable area. But it was in a Japanese establishment, so we felt, well, that would be okay. So we got a room there and that would be Mits' sister Pauline, and must have been Pauline, Yoshi and myself.

BK: And when was this?

JT: And that would be in 1944 after school, after finished high school.

BK: You had finished high school, you left camp early?

JT: Well, we left camp... this was seasonal work so we just went out for then summer and worked in the cannery and when that was over we came back to camp again, and then I'd be working at the hospital or something after that. And then that went on for quite some time and then in 1945, summer of 1945, Pauline was -- Mits' sister -- was planning to go to nursing school and she was accepted and was scheduled to go that fall. Was that June? About June I think was. They had the summers that she would start... but then it came that somehow it came necessary, that she said that it was all full and they notified her and said that she would not be able to start until the fall quarter. So that's when we went out to Minneapolis. She said, "I'm gonna go anyway," she was just angry and she was crying. I said, "Well," I says, "You could wait." She said no, she said, "I'm going to Minneapolis. You wanna go?" And so I thought, "Yeah, I'll go, too." Mits was gone into the service at that point. And so I thought, well, there was nothing else to keep me there, sort of, to speak, and so she and I went out to Minneapolis in the summer of 1945.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.