<Begin Segment 14>

FK: So when you, when you left the army, where did you go?

TM: Well, I came back here.

FK: What was it like when you came back?

TM: [Laughs] Oh... things were pretty slow, I guess. I remember I applied for the "52-20 club". That's what you call, you're entitled to fifty-two weeks of twenty dollars a month or something, 'til you find a job or something. That's when I got in with the Olympic berries... I didn't have to go in every week.

FK: You said Olympic berries? Is that what you said?

TM: Yeah, I started in about '49, I guess, until about '72, I think. 1972 is when I quit.

FK: Why did you get into Olympic berries? Everybody else was into strawberries or something else, right?

TM: Yeah, 'cause Olympic berries, it's easier to get pickers, I guess. Nobody wanted to pick strawberries then.

FK: Didn't you end up doing something with Frederick & Nelson's or something?

TM: Yeah, they bought some. They wanted, they wanted it canned, so I used to have it done, canned in Kingston there, a co-op, then they quit. So I had to do it, so I set up a place and bought their machinery and I canned it myself for several years. Until they said, one year, they said, "Well, we don't need any more this year." I said, well, I wasn't gonna do it. By the time I get fed up with it, so I quit. [Laughs]

FK: And what did you do after that?

TM: I went to work in the shipyard as a welder. That worked all right a couple of years. In the summertime, I'd quit working the berries and in the wintertime, I'd go back to the shipyard. Well, I found out that you can make more money welding, so I quit the berries altogether.

FK: So how did you know how to do welding?

TM: Oh, I went to night school at Edison Technical.

FK: Was that after the war you went to Edison?

TM: Yeah. Well, they told me that the public school, the way everything was set up there, it wasn't the place to change jobs or to take that training. I told them that I had to learn how to weld to repair farm equipment and things like that, so I got by that way. And after, I did change my job, got out of farming.

FK: And then you worked at the shipyard for a couple years and then what?

TM: Yeah, that's a year-round job. Then the shipyard closed up, and then the State took over this yard down here. I was out of welding, and then they called me one day and said, "You want to come work down there?" Meanwhile, I have, I paid up by union, I was all paid up with the union whether I was working or not, so I came right in there and been there forty years. Forty years. [Laughs]

FK: The state ferries? Is that with the state ferries, maintenance?

TM: Yeah.

FK: Forty years, so when did you retire?

TM: Huh?

FK: When did you retire?

TM: Last July.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.