<Begin Segment 22>

KM: Then they had an opportunity to do some sugar beet topping and get outside of camp. So I took advantage, there was five of us, six guys, we decided to form the team that signed up to go to somewhere to farm to chop up the sugar beets.

MN: Where did you go?

KM: So I went to a place called Rigby, Idaho.

MN: What month did you go out there?

KM: Oh, probably September or October. That was 1942.

MN: How did you get to Rigby, Idaho?

KM: Oh, we probably took a train and bus.

MN: Were you escorted by the military?

KM: No, no escorts.

MN: So once you got to the sugar beet farm, what did you have to do there?

KM: Well, we topped sugar beets. Very hard work, especially when you have six guys there, city-bred, and never looked at a farm. Anyway, we were starting on the sugar beets row, you start from one end and you look down in a straight line, and it's about a quarter of a mile down, and you had to top all the beets there, pulled up by the plow so that we can get 'em and chop the tops off. Then we had to go back and load 'em onto the truck. Hard work.

MN: How were the living conditions here?

KM: There? Oh, they had a, farmer had a shack that he converted so that we can sleep in there, then we had an outhouse that we had to do all our business in. And then there was a big creek that used to run by the house, I remember it was during the first part of the stay there, we could jump in the, take a bath in the creek. But near the end of the thing, November, early part of November, it got so cold, I didn't go in, too cold. Some of the fellows did, but they come out black and blue.

MN: So how did you keep yourself clean?

KM: Huh?

MN: How did you --

KM: Oh, well, later on, we used to take a sponge bath.

MN: Who cooked for you guys?

KM: We cook ourselves. And then we had to cook on, not a gas stove, it was a wood burner stove, but we managed.

MN: What did you use to eat?

KM: That I can't remember. We cooked something.

MN: How did you get your food supplies?

KM: The farmer took us to the market in town. We didn't have any transportation, so the farmer had to take us down.

MN: So how did the townspeople treat you?

KM: They didn't... there was no sign of discrimination and all that, we didn't feel it. Of course, we were just there temporarily anyway. So we were sort of accepted because we were saving some of the farmer's crops.

MN: What about laundry? How did you clean your clothes?

KM: Oh, we had to do our own laundry. So if we needed to, we had to do all hand laundering. You scrub it on a board or something to keep it clean.

MN: Did it rain while you were out there?

KM: I can't recall, but it must have rained. That time of year in Idaho, I'm pretty sure. But I can't recall any days off that we had that was a rainy, rainy day or something.

MN: Now other than this group of six Japanese Americans, were there other workers on the farm?

KM: No. At that time it was sugar beet harvesting time, so the only ones that would be there would be workers that were harvesting the farm, and there wasn't too many farmers that had their own helpers. So that's why they recruited the guys at camp.

MN: Now how were you paid?

KM: Oh, we got paid by... the pay was based on the tonnage or something like that, I remember. But our beets were so small that we got, per ton, we got a little more money, but because it was small, it took a lot of beets to make a ton. I remember some of the, some kids that went to Idaho some other place after we did, and they were talking about beets being, weighing between twenty pounds per beets compared to our maybe five or six pounds. So they made a little more money.

MN: Now what month did you finish topping the sugar beets?

KM: What month?

MN: Uh-huh.

KM: I can't recall, but I think it didn't go into December. It was probably November. Because if the ground freezes, then they can't plow that sugar beets off the ground.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.