<Begin Segment 11>

FK: So did you run into any problems when you went out of camp, like when you went out to work, or back in Chicago, as far as racial relations or anything like that, or people being suspicious because you were Japanese?

TM: No. Not a bit of that stuff.

FK: Well, tell me about being in Chicago.

TM: Well... hot in the winter -- hot in the summer and cool in winter, I guess.

FK: What did you do in Chicago?

TM: I worked in a machine shop.

FK: Were there quite a few guys that you knew that were in Chicago with you, or were you pretty much there on your own?

TM: Yeah, pretty much on my own. I noticed a few Bainbridge guys came in and, came and... they came and they left. They stayed a while and then went back, if they didn't get drafted.

FK: So how did you get a job in the machine shop in Chicago?

TM: I don't know, you just apply for it, I guess. They got all kinds of employment agencies, paying twenty dollars' worth, getting a job, I guess. And there's Department of Labor and all that.

FK: Now, in order to get out of concentration camp and go to someplace like Chicago, was there some paperwork you had to fill out? Did they keep track of you? What happens when you do that?

TM: Yeah, really, I didn't... I didn't really head for Chicago, I headed first to a place called Boone, Iowa, where the chick-sexing school. That's, I got clearance to go there. But then I, I quit the school. Then I had to go somewhere, didn't want to go back to camp, so I went to Chicago. That's where my brother was, so I moved in with him.

[Interruption]

FK: I was wondering, what is, you said you went to chicken sex, chicken sex school?

TM: Yeah, chick sexing.

FK: Yeah, tell me about that. What is that?

TM: When they hatch a bunch of chicks, they don't know what, what it's gonna be, a pullet or a cockerel. And then wanna keep the pullets because they lay eggs, but the cockerels, they don't want because they're roosters. So the hatchery wanted to separate 'em and then they sell them separately. The roosters go to the fryer market, I guess. They're kept separate, anyway. And then the pullets would go to lay eggs, so they separate 'em day-old, I guess, and then and we'd tell 'em if they're pullets or roosters. Then they get paid. They paid for, get paid for each one, for separating them, I guess. There used to be a guy in Manzanar that lived in Block 3, that was a chick-sexer. And he got in, he used to get these Bainbridge guys together and I don't know if it even occurred to him, but he talked like it was a good profession to get into. It was not much work, but it paid good.

FK: Why did you decide to drop out of chick-sexing school?

TM: Oh, my hands were... weren't, they were too clumsy for that kind of stuff. But the Okazaki boys and Yosh Katayama -- they went to a different place -- but they became chick sexers. George Okazaki, I think he's an official in the Chick Sexing Association in, back in Philadelphia. I don't know how many of the Okazaki boys were sexers themselves, but I think there were several of them.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.