<Begin Segment 12>

EO: Let's go back even further. Okay. Now, I understand that Issei and Kibei didn't, were not, they didn't get the best jobs, did they? Tell me about -- was there sort of a discrimination against Issei and Kibei in camp?

HU: Well, yet... well, we were just new out there so I don't know there any discrimination in there or not, yet. You know, first thing they offer me a job is clean up the sagebrush, so I accepted. I'm not afraid to work hard, so I went out and I got sixteen dollar a month. Then I have a chance to look and see the, outside the camp then. You know what I mean? I never been that area, so I seen some of these old, old stall or barn, and broken chicken wires and some horse manure still there, and so the people must lived there a long time ago. And then I brought some horse manure back and plant popcorn I had, so I plant the popcorn seed in there but I brought the whole bunch of, find the old gunnysack in the, in the horse barn, and filled up the manure. But the time I emptied out there, I notice a bunch of small scorpions in there. [Laughs] Yeah, lot of scorpion inside the manure, but they're, they're harmless. They went away as long as you don't touch it.

And I plant the popcorn, and then about a month later, Director Coverley made a speech in the mess hall. He said, "Over here, everybody working small wages and volunteer, so as long as you do your job, nobody can tell you to shift a different job or get fired." That's what he told me. That's very important to us later. And so I applied for the mess hall job. Some people, I know a friend of mine, he applied, too. But you know, some of them had syphilis still way deep in the, between the bone, maybe the...

CO: Syphilis?

HU: Yeah. And the blood sample still showed so he couldn't get the job. There's some people have those, you know, but they won't show outside no more, because they're sort of, kind of, what you call, hiding period. And I notice some men, they had, but we never suspect, but a year later my wife told me that he came over and he's blind. You know, they come to the eyes so many years passed.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.