<Begin Segment 30>

BK: But your father did come back and stayed just for a few months, it sounds like, before you then left?

JT: Before, yeah, then I left with -- Pauline was going, as I say, out to nurses training -- but since that didn't work out just at that particular time, she says we're going to go anyway, "I'm going anyway." So she said, "Do you want to go with me?" And so I said, "All right, then I'll go with you, too." And so we both went out to Minneapolis and we stayed in a hostel. I stayed in a hostel for a while and that was right downtown in Minneapolis. And that worked out fine for me. I got a job in a defense plant. Would you believe it? But I had no idea what was going on in that defense plant and I don't know why they even hired me because they didn't really have any work for me. I might have typed a few letters but that's about all. And so I thought, "Well, gee, this is no fun. I have to sit here all day and try to look like I'm doing something," when there was really nothing to do, so I left it. I was at the defense plant in Brighton, Minnesota, I remember that. And I thought it was a pretty good paying job for the time.

And then, so then Pauline and I went out and found work together in Munsingwear stocking and hosiery and underthings. We found a job in the, a sewing job in the Munsingwear factory. And at that time, they were still producing khakis for the men in service, so it was line type work for all of us. Everybody had a certain part of the pants and the pants passed along for each of us and my job was the pockets and I think Pauline said hers was putting the flies on the pants. [Laughs] And so that was the job to just tide us over, more or less, and then my father sent me money sometime, from time to time, from their poor little pittance of sixteen dollars a month or whatever it was that they made. And so it wasn't that really that good a job but it was enough that we paid our rent and made more friends out there, too, among the Nihonjins. There were quite a few Nihonjins in Minneapolis so surprisingly...

BK: So there was -- how were you received in Minnesota and Minneapolis? There seemed to have been no problem?

JT: No, no problem there. I don't think they really probably knew what, who we were or what we were, 'cause the Midwest, I don't think had too many people Japanese people at that time. Although there was a family that lived in Minneapolis for quite some time there and Kimi was a nurse out there in one of the hospitals, and I think she was the one that lived there. You didn't have to evacuate, I think, probably, if you were there. And so, but I knew that her sister was in camp because I knew Reiko in camp. So she moved out to Minneapolis, the family moved out, and joined her sister there in Minneapolis, and so I knew they were there. But we lived in a hostel and then we moved into an apartment unit. And I said to Pauline, "Do you remember all those cockroaches that came out of the kitchen?" They had an old kitchen queen in our unit and we opened the flour cupboard, well, of course, that's where they like to be, and they just exploded out of there. And we ran out of there quickly. And then we got our nerve back together again and got bug spray or whatever it was we did, and began stomping around in there, and tried to get 'em out of there. Oh, it was something, quite an experience. [Laughs]

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.