Densho Digital Repository - Katsugo Miho Interview III (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-3-10)

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MN: And what was your work as a maintenance man at Maui Pine?

KM: Oh, very interesting. I learned how to paint. During the canning it was, the pineapple cannery, June, July, August, in my time it was twenty-four hours, and so we worked eight-hour shifts. You either worked one, two or three shifts. Because I was a regular employee, I would work the first shift, which would mean that you go in early morning and in the afternoon we went home. But offseason, June, July and August, it's considered the peak of the pineapple season. Thereafter, it slows down. Those years, pineapple was not, the technique had not been cleared where you would have all-year-round fruiting. Basically, it was June, July and August, and thereafter it was very intermittent. You may have one day a week canning or depending on the fruits. Especially November, December, January, February, you had very little canning days. So those were the days that the cannery did maintenance work, which was why physically we had to scrape off the rust and paint thereafter. And I'm talking about the ceiling. That was the real big, scary job. And the ceiling in the cannery may be twenty, twenty-five feet. And you had to put in two-by-twelve planks to board the rafters. You know, you had the ceiling and you have the rafters where these, what they call totan roofs. And underneath had to be the rusty spot, the old paint had to be scraped off. So in some areas, it required us to get a blowtorch, blowtorch the old paint. Didn't have these strong chemicals that would scrape off the paint, you had to blow it off, and blow it down, and then scrape it off. What you did was you were sitting on, standing, or lying on these two-by-four planks, from rafter to rafter. It was a real dangerous job, I remember, we weren't being paid extra hazardous pay or anything. But it required us going up to ten, fifteen feet and hanging on to ropes. And some places you had to hang on, most places you had the rope and the rope between the rafters. You hold on with one hand and paint with the other hand or scrape with the other hand. At seventeen year or eighteen years old, I was doing this, for one year.

MN: At that time, did you consider it dangerous?

KM: I remember there was an older worker, and he was a real scaredy cat. I remember he was really a scaredy cat. Certain areas he would refuse to go up. We didn't know any better.

MN: And how much were you paid for doing all that?

KM: I believe it was almost thirty cents an hour, I think. I remember it was thirty-three or thirty-five cents an hour. And after being discharged from the Territorial Guard, when I went back to Maui, there was an option to go back to Maui Pine or get a defense job. And you know, I chose the defense job primarily because of the pay. Maui Pine still paid forty cents an hour, I think, forty cents, at that point, 1942, forty cents an hour. But the USED, United States Engineering Corps paid sixty-five cents an hour. And not only eight, we were ten, ten hours a day, seven days a week, for the one year that I was out before joining the 442.

MN: So having worked at Maui Pine for one year, what were you expected to pay for when you went to the UH? Everything?

KM: Oh, I had expected to do part-time jobs going to university, like I did when I went to law school. Even at the university, being a veteran, I worked at a bookstore. We worked, I put in a lot of hours at the bookstore.

WN: Was that a common thing to, after high school, work one year? Was it your parents requiring that or was that more or less...

KM: I don't know. In my time, it was already a practice in the family, so it was an automatic thing. I never considered going straight to university right after high school.