<Begin Segment 11>

AM: Okay. Let's talk a bit more about the work that you did in Colorado. You first went to a farm and did what kind of work?

JS: We went to a farm, and yeah, worked for twenty-five cents an hour. [Laughs] And that was it. I mean, one day we threw down our hoe in the middle of the field and took a bus into Denver.

AM: How many of you did that?

JS: Two of us, yeah. And we went to Denver and went to the Denver Ice Company, we heard they were hiring, so he says, "If you go to work right now we'll give you sixty-five cents an hour." So we took the job, we didn't have any gloves, no galoshes, and we had to go chop ice about ten stories up. [Laughs] And that was, it was miserable.

AM: But at least you got sixty-five cents an hour. [Laughs]

JS: We got sixty-five cents an hour, yeah.

AM: And where else did you live and work before you were drafted?

JS: After I got hurt there at the ice company, I worked delivering produce at the market there.

AM: Okay. And did you move to Cleveland?

JS: Yeah, then I went to camp to visit my folks, then to Cleveland, Ohio, and that's where I worked in the factory for a while, then I got drafted there in Cleveland.

AM: And as you said, you had a permanent clearance. So once you left camp, you could go different places --

JS: Yeah, you could go, you'd go any --

AM: -- come back.

JS: -- except the West Coast. You couldn't come to the West Coast.

AM: Okay. And in 1944, you were drafted.

JS: Yes, uh-huh.

AM: And how many years were you in the service?

JS: I was in Germany for one year before I came back, and I came back to Chicago, because I was married then and my wife was there, so I had to come back to Chicago.

AM: That's right. Now, just talking a little bit about your family's financial losses because of the evacuation, can you tell us kind of the things you felt happened because, financially?

JS: Well, it was very hard on the parents. I mean, they had nothing when they got out to camp. They went to Utah to work and that's where they ended up then before they came back to California.

AM: And during -- so you said they went to camp without anything, and they didn't have any financial resources in camp, really?

JS: No, no.

AM: Okay.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.