<Begin Segment 18>

SF: How did these jobs get arranged? Like if you went from one fruit to another, and the sugar beets, was there, how did you know that the ranch needed help?

LH: I kind of think Mr. Davis was, did that, because how would they know? We lived so far away from there. This is Brigham City on the way to Ogden, which is closer to Brigham City than where we lived, 'cause we're up North, so I have a hunch Mr. Davis had a hand in all, most of our jobs, thinking back anyway.

TI: And Mr. Davis was the, with the sugar company, U and I Sugar Company.

LH: With the sugar company, and he was the only rep that I remember with us always, always. He was always with us, and he was a gray haired, thin man, very nice looking and always helpful. He was always there. And I don't ever remember an unkind word about him at all. He was always there, uh-huh. And then from the peaches, in between the tomato, the cannery in (the town of) Perry would hire us and so some of us would work on the belt, and I don't know what they did 'cause I, what I, I was hired to get the cans and put it on the belt so that they could be filled, but I know the mothers and the, the other people worked somewhere in the cannery and I don't know, I just don't know what they did. And then the other thing I did on, I did work on the belt with the string beans. It comes down the belt and then you remove the bad ones and let the others go. And we didn't do that too much because we had to go pick apples, I think it was, or pick beans. We had to pick beans, bush beans there on the ground. But when we worked at the cannery, like I said, the canneries have these cabin like places, well, that's where we saw the Heart Mountain girls. They were from Heart Mountain, been hired to work at the cannery. And I don't think I knew any of them, so, other than that they were from Heart Mountain and I think some other camps, too.

TI: And they were there, like, on a work release?

LH: I think so. Uh-huh.

SF: Did you ever compare yourself being on the outside with the camp people? Did you think you were fortunate or less fortunate?

LH: Those things never entered our mind. It was, we had a job, we got it done. We, I don't think our minds strayed that far. It just, what had to be done was done for the day, and then we'd go home and wait for the next day. I mean, I didn't have any longings for anything, if that's what you mean, you know, I wish I could do this or that, other than I said later that, about skiing. [Laughs] Skiing, and learning to dance. And then we picked bush beans and there we did meet somebody from San Jose working there, too. It was one of the Yasukawa boys and I forgot his name, but he was there from somewhere. I don't, maybe from camp. I don't know. I should ask, but not the Yasukawas... They're almost gone, all gone now. The only ones are the ones our age. Well anyway, and then from the beans we went to pick apples. We picked tomatoes, too, somewhere I forgot, and that was a job because we have three rows to, we take three rows, each person, and then the box is in the center, so we have to fill the box and then there's, we stacked 'em up along, along the side, so we had to lift that and probably five high, four or five high. And then when we picked the beans it's by the pound, so everybody's trying to fill the sack up as much as we can because they deduct for the sack, so those sacks would be so heavy and we'd have to lug it up to the... [laughs]. It seems funny, but that's how it was. Every, everything counted. It meant something. But I remember the heavy sacks there, too.

Oh, and the apples we picked in buckets and the first ones were the Yellow Delicious, the Golden Delicious, and then the Red Delicious... or maybe not. There was the other one, the red one, the Macintosh? They're smaller. There were three different kinds of apples we picked, those three, but that was good 'cause we got to take apples home and my mother used to make, they used to can the tomatoes and can the apples. What else did they can? Well the fruit, 'cause we could take it home, so we had canned fruit. The parents, well, I did the same thing. They, whatever they could they canned for winter use and that was the advantage of working in the fields. Nobody had a pressure cooker, so we didn't do the vegetables, except tomatoes you don't, you can do that on an open kettle. And then after the, that was the topping season.

TI: This is back to sugar beets?

LH: Back to sugar beets. So that was another experience. You have these topping knives with the point on the end so you could grab the beet and you'd grab the leaves and you whack off the beet from the leaves. And then all the beets would be in a row here and the leaves would be on a row here, and when all the beets are topped the truck would come and so the people on this side and people on this side and we'd throw to fill up the dump trucks, and the dump trucks were special because I think when they went to the, to wherever they unloaded near a railroad track, I think the bottoms came out or something like that, anyway, so it just went down, either that or it dumped this way, I can't remember, but anyway, they were special, built specially for sugar beets. So we'd throw them over and you'd grab 'em by the tail part of the sugar beets and throw 'em in, and it's like everything else, if the ground is good you have these big sugar beets. If the ground is poor you have these small ones, so if the small ones are, it takes a long time to fill a truck, but these big ones are heavy and so by the time truck gets mounded like this you have to be careful because sometimes it goes over and hits, you could hit the person. And it had happened, but I remember laughing.

TI: Oh, on the other side you would, you would throw them.

LH: On the other side, exactly. And in the winter after the freeze they're just frozen, so they're heavier. But we used to get a big laugh if it went over and somebody got hit. Nobody got hit in the head, but maybe in the shoulder or something, but it didn't happen, but it, when it did we all got a big laugh out of it. So it was hard work, it was cold, and we got it done. [Laughs] And then the, from there I said the men got off, but the other thing was sometimes the men worked in the wheat fields, too. It was, it had to be in the fall because I remember seeing them and if you've ever carried a sack of wheat, it's really heavy and Japanese men aren't, most of 'em aren't big. My father, most of them, there were some taller ones, but they had to carry that big thing. But there were times when they worked in the wheat, the men did.

After the topping, the women, and I don't know how we got the job, but in Tremonton they had a turkey processing plant and I don't know who did it before we were there, the years before or after, but for some reason they hired us those couple of years we were there and we were the only ones. There were no hakujin. There were just the German prisoners of war that took over the killing of the birds and taking, defeathering them and, and I don't remember any hakujin, except in the other building where after we'd dressed it all it went probably for packing. For some reason we never ventured into the other building where, where it went to be packaged or whatever was done with it. But when we first got there we opened that door, the smell was so bad and then, but then, you know, once you get working on it you forget it 'cause you're concentrating on your work. But the German prisoners of war, there was a prisoner of war camp on the hillside north of Ogden. It's not there anymore, but they had this camp up there, the barracks and that's where they sent the prisoners of war, so a busload came every morning, might, may be about thirty-five miles maybe. I'm not sure, but anyway, they came in the morning and there was a guard and they'd unload them and they'd come in.

And it started from this wall, from here the turkeys came in cages and they're taken, they'd take 'em out and they'd hang 'em up by their feet and this, this chain goes, keeps going around back and forth, back and forth until the very end where they go to be packaged, but that chain comes back again, so it's just continuous. And the first prisoner would string it up, I remember. The next one would, I think he slit his throat and, and I'm not sure if he beheaded him or if the next person did. But anyway, it went down and then they'd take the big feathers off the arm there, the big feathers and the tail feathers, so the men along the wall would do that. And then it'd come around and it'd go through a wax bath. It's this brown wax and it's hot and the turkey would dip in there and come out and then it would go through a cooling bath and then that hardens the wax. And then it would keep going and then the other prisoners would peel it off in chunks to try to get, hopefully get most of the, the feathers off, the big ones, after the big ones. And then it would come to us and then, by then it's just the little pin feathers and there's a lot of 'em, so it's our job to pick one and follow it, we're always walking and you'd have to pick all those little pin feathers off until it's clean. So by the time it, you're at the other end you hope it's all done, and it usually is. Once in a while we had to unhook it and start over where we started because all the birds are not plump and good looking. Some of 'em are sickly looking and they're bruised, black and blue and thin, like they were not healthy birds and those are the ones that the feathers, it's hard to take off, so it takes longer. Then you'd have to unhook and start over again.

SF: What happened to the bad birds?

LH: I don't know. We thought maybe they made it into soup. Yeah.

SF: Were, did the Germans have the good jobs or the Japanese?

LH: Oh, ours was easy because the, it's all cleaned except for those little pin feathers. If you ever buy a turkey, look. You'll see some of those little pin feathers there, 'cause I take 'em off before I cook the bird 'cause I've been there and I know that they don't belong there. I don't know how they do it anymore, but that's how it was in those days. But those German prisoners really had to work hard. And they were a good looking bunch. They're all tall except a couple were short. One man was forty-five. I asked him; he was forty-five. He was the oldest one. And the other one was the youngest one; he was fifteen. Can you imagine? Fifteen. Anyway, so they were all working there and on their time off they used to, with the wax that's on the, the flume thing, they would form their village, buildings with the roof and the wall. I wish we had kept somethin' like that, but they were remarkable. And then while they're working they'd be singing, and then one of the ladies was telling me they sound like the Nihon no marching, the military marching songs, with gusto. And they really enjoyed it. And the only one we knew was that, I said the "Roll Out the Barrel." It's German and we didn't know all the words, but whenever, the "roll out the barrel" came out when they sang that, but it was entertainment for us, too, by them. We got along simply because we were both sort of in the same position, and I wished I kept in contact with one, 'cause I used to write it down, but I never did. I wish I did.

TI: That's a good story.

LH: But I thought that was an experience most people don't get to do, working with the prisoners. They're just human, just like we are. Yeah, they have, they don't want war either, but some are fanatics about war and killing, but... yeah, it was a good experience to go through.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.