<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Okay, so George, we're going to start the second half of the interview. The first part we talked about your life growing up in Bellevue and then going to Pinedale, Tule Lake. And you talked about filling out the questionnaire, and then you said after that you went out and did some farm, farm work? So why don't you describe that. How did you find out about doing farm work?

GY: Well, that part, I don't know how we found out, but the word got around that if you wanted to go out to work, you could go. The first one I went to is in Idaho someplace. I don't where it was, Pocatello or something in Idaho. And went to do beet thinning, thinning beets. Never heard of that before, you know. There'd be about six inches between each plant, and you see a double one, you got to pull that out. Oh, it was backbreaking, you stoop over all the time. And it was hard because you'd go out as a group, four or five or whatever, and you can't slough off, you know, because you're going to get paid in one lump sum and you've got to divide that evenly. So that was the hard part. But anyway, did that, and we harvested lettuce in the wintertime.

TI: Well, going back to that first one, so you're with a group of four or five, how did they determine groups? Who did you know who you were gonna work with?

GY: Well, the farmers come to this camp and picked us up and we would go with him. And we'll finish harvesting or doing something on his farm.

TI: But did you get to choose who you went with? Like did you go as a group?

GY: We went as a -- well, myself, I came out as a group from camp, we stuck together. There was four or five of us. So the farmer come to pick us up and we'd work on his farm.

TI: Now, how did you choose the four or five of you, though? Did you know each other?

GY: Just friends, just friends. [Laughs]

TI: Were they friends from Bellevue or from Tule Lake?

GY: Yeah, from Bellevue mostly. Something to do, I guess.

TI: And so because of that, you chose, did you guys think about who would be good workers when you chose the group? Like, "George is a good worker, so we'll have him come"? Is that...

GY: No. Says, "You want to come? You want to come? Come and join us," that's all.

TI: Now, and why did you guys want to do this? I mean, why work backbreaking work versus staying in camp?

GY: Well, I don't think any of us knew how backbreaking it was. It was just to get out of camp and make some money, that's about all. That's the way I felt, so we went. And after that, sure, we went back to camp and we had a chance to come back out again. I ended up on the railroad, working for the railroad, I myself did. The rest of the group was all scattered together.

TI: Yeah, that's kind of interesting because after Pearl Harbor, the railroads fired all the Japanese workers.

GY: That's true.

TI: Because they said they were a security risk and the railroads were strategic. And so you're telling me that the railroad hired you?

GY: Yeah.

TI: So explain that.

GY: That's the funny part of it. They fired 'em all after the war broke out, now they're going to recruit us. So I ended up at Milwaukee Road, and who do you think the foreman was? An Issei man, an old railroad man. But he had an assistant also with him, which was a Caucasian. That was the difference, the two of 'em working together. It was fun.

TI: And so when they had a Caucasian assistant, so the Issei would know how to do everything and the Caucasian would just watch the Issei?

GY: [Laughs] Yeah, that's how it was, just a figurehead, that's all.

TI: So this is the first time I've heard about this. So they hired people to work on the railroad. And you're working with the Milwaukee?

GY: Yeah, Milwaukee Road, yeah.

TI: And so what kind of work did you do?

GY: Oh, trackage. I mean, we kept the tracks in repair. That's where I got my social security card. [Laughs]

TI: Because, doing railroad work.

GY: Yeah.

TI: Because this was the first time you were working with a big company.

GY: Right, yeah.

TI: And so how did you like railroad work?

GY: It was fun. I knew nothing about it, you know. I don't think any of us knew anything about it. When we got out there, it was cold, and the first job that we went on, off to, was working in a tunnel, wintertime. I never swung a mallet, steel-headed mallet and hit the spike. Man, you miss the spike and it goes sparking around, flying around, it was something else. It was fun. There was quite a few of us, maybe twenty-five, thirty of us. And we lived in a boxcar where it was all equipped with bunks, we had a main kitchen, and we ate there.

TI: And these were all Japanese?

GY: Yeah, Nisei kids, you know.

TI: That's interesting. And you mentioned earlier about doing the ice to keep the produce cold. Was that during this time, too?

GY: Yeah, that was one of the jobs out on the track. And the ice came from around here, great big blocks of ice in the boxcar. We unloaded that and stuck 'em in a storage shed and put sawdust on top of it so it wouldn't thaw out. And later on I found out they used that ice for re-icing the refrigerator cars coming through.

TI: And so ice around here, so from the lakes they would cut out these big chunks of ice and load them into these railroad cars?

GY: But I didn't know that for a long time. [Laughs] We work for cheap, sixty-two cents.

TI: So when you say for cheap, was that the going rate. Did other railroad workers...

GY: I suppose. [Laughs] So you worked at night, you got time and a half. So it wasn't too bad. It was a lot of fun.

TI: And when you made all this money, what did you do with the money?

GY: Gosh, I don't know what I did with mine. [Laughs]

TI: Or did, would you guys do things like gambling and drinking when you're on the road?

GY: Probably some did, but I don't know what happened to us. I don't think we gambled or anything like that. We kept to ourselves. That was a nice experience, that's all there is to it. Nowadays, even if I talk to somebody from Montana, says, "I don't know what town that is." [Laughs]

TI: 'Cause you were on the rails for all those little towns, you would go...

GY: Well, worked between a place called Deer Lodge and Three Forks. Three Forks is on the eastern end, and Deer Lodge, Montana, over there on the western end. Between there, that was the territory that we patrolled, repaired the tracks. If the train jumps the track, it gets all damaged, we had to straighten it out and stuff like that. It was all right.

TI: And so how long did you do this?

GY: Well, I think I did about six months or something like that.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.