<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So about what time, what year did you graduate from high school?

FO: Huh?

TI: What year did you graduate?

FO: '41, 1941.

TI: So this is like June 1941, and then I think you mentioned that you got a job at the apple drying?

FO: Yeah, that was that winter that I graduated, yeah, '41.

TI: So tell me a little bit about that job, and what kind of business? I've heard about it from other people.

FO: Well, the apple drier, they dried the apple, and that was the only way to preserve apple those days. But nowadays, they have frozen apple juice, all that stuff. But those days, a woman used to feed the machine, peeler, and there's a tray where a woman cut out the bad part of the apple, it goes in the slicing machine, and lay it on the tray, and they put the tray in a cooker, heater. And at night we go back to work again and scrape all that dried apple on the bottom bin. So those days, I worked ten hours a day, seven days a week.

TI: And how many people were employed by this apple drying...

FO: Oh, must have been about... maybe thirty maybe.

TI: And was this seasonal?

FO: Yeah, seasonal, yeah.

TI: So it was for, like a, how long a period did you have to work?

FO: Just during apple season, yeah.

TI: So that, how long would that be?

FO: Oh, about a couple of months, maybe.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.