<Begin Segment 15>

TI: What caused you to leave the camp? You said you were there for more than six months or so. What led you to leave the camp?

FF: Okay, I was like, really, most people in camp, I wasn't totally uncomfortable there. I mean, you were eating dust all the time and in the winter you were slogging through the mud and junk like that. But aside from, really some of those discomforts and inconveniences, cripes, it was a nice social environment for guys my age, now. And so it was a... I had really, no real burning desire to get out of camp. But I had a brother-in-law -- my sister got married, and I had a brother-in-law that relocated. And he was really old enough to know that staying in camp was really a dead end, and so he, he was relocated to Chicago, and he told my old man to send me out, see. And so, sort of against my wishes -- [laughs] -- I was sort of, sort of forced to go to Chicago. And once I got out there, I got a job at this place called Maclur's. And after getting a real paying job, after the relocation center where I was getting paid sixteen dollars a month, I had an honest-to-God job, out in Chicago. And boy, I was really living it up. It was really the life of Riley for me. And so I was planning to stay in Chicago for the duration, except my brother-in-law and sister had other ideas. And so they made some contacts with some Maryknoll people they know in Chicago and they got me accepted in a, in Loras College in Dubuque, you see. And then -- so that school year, all of a sudden, here is my brother-in-law and his friends came and hauled me out of the room and sent me off to Dubuque. So, it was... I ended up in Dubuque in spite of my desire.

TI: Well, it sounds like you, not only your father but your brother-in-law were really looking out after you. They didn't want you to, sort of while away your time, first in the camps and then later on in Chicago; they really sounded like they really wanted you to keep moving on with your career.

FF: Oh yeah, that's for sure. I suppose I recognized that even at that time. But when you're having fun you don't want to botch it up.

EG: You weren't thinking of going to college? This was not a notion that you had?

FF: I was, I can't say that I was... through high school I was -- unlike many Japanese Americans, I wasn't really one of those stellar students. In fact, there was many things about school that I liked. And things I liked, I really bore down on. And things that I didn't like, I just let go. And so, I always had some kind of a grade sheet that looked like night and day. Some things I was good at and some things I was lousy at. So I really hadn't aspired to going to college.

TI: And how long did you go to college?

FF: I went one year. And then, I got drafted and so I thought, well... so I finished the one year. And then I came back to Minidoka for a month or month and a half or two to wait for induction.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.