<Begin Segment 5>

CO: Well, now what about your leaving?

JO: I left the family in 1926, early 1926, when I was thirteen years old. But I had obtained a job, you wouldn't believe it. [Laughs] I, I hardly believe it myself. But when I went into the contractor's office I thought they would consider me too young. But lo and behold, he assigned me to Ketchikan, Alaska, to work in the salmon canneries.

CO: How long did you do that?

JO: I was on a six-month contract, and then when I returned, I went to Anacortes and worked until the season ended in Puget Sound.

[Interruption]

CO: I just want to step back quickly, just to clarify something in the banishment. That was just pranks against white people?

JO: Right.

CO: You could commit a prank against a Japanese.

JO: Yeah, you could do most things against another Japanese, but that was okay as long as you didn't do it against a white person.

CO: Were there Indians on Bainbridge Island?

JO: Indians? There were no Indians on the island. That was a long time ago. That was when the Snoqualmie Indians got driven out of Bainbridge Island, just like the Japanese were in '42.

CO: In the canneries, were there other boys your age working?

JO: Yes. My friend got a job there but I couldn't get a job. I was turned down. They told me that when, when I felt that they were ignoring me, two of us went to the cannery to apply for a job. I asked him, "What about me?" And he says, "You can get all sorts of jobs on the farm." He says, "What they need is a lot of pickers." That's how he felt.

CO: Your schooling. What kind of school... can I ask... why did you leave at thirteen?

JO: Well, Bainbridge Island, being as it was very discriminatory, there was no opportunity. I felt that, I didn't think that there was a green field beyond the horizon, I never thought that. But I thought that life couldn't be any worse than what I was experiencing on the island.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.