<Begin Segment 7>

SF: So, when did you first leave Heart Mountain?

GH: Well, almost immediately after we got there, everybody went out to work in either some type of work, seasonal type, like there was a big demand for harvesting sugar beets and whatever else was being harvested at the time. Because that was the fall of the year, and so wheat was being harvested, and sugar beets were being harvested. Can't think of any other, but so we went out almost within a couple, three weeks of when we arrived in Heart Mountain, and we didn't return 'til about first of November or the middle of November.

SF: So did you go out because basically you wanted to make some money, or you were bored and want to get, wanted to get out of the camp environment? Or why did you go out and work on these farms?

GH: Well, I wanted to get away, and also to make some money. They would hire people in camp, I think the low pay was twelve dollars a month, twelve dollars a month. And the next category was fourteen or something like that. That was for semi-skilled, and then the top was eighteen dollars, I think, a month, and that was for professionals like doctors and dentists and administrative workers and stuff. I mean, that was, that's for a month, now.

SF: So I remember you telling me earlier about an interesting story when you went to Montana to top sugar beets. What happened with this hunter?

GH: The guy that took a shot at us? Well, the guy came down the road, and I stopped what we were topping sugar beets, and looked at us, and then pointed his gun and shot at us, but he missed us. Like, like maybe a couple of feet away. But then he, it was a double, I guess it was a double-barrel shotgun, and the second shot, he hit us. And then, of course, he had to reload, so we ran after him, and he jumped in his truck and took off down the road a ways, and then he stopped and loaded his gun again, but I guess he was kind of nervous because he was having a little problem loading it. So we ran after him again and he kind of had some second thoughts about it, I guess, and he took off.

SF: Did you expect to find people this hostile towards you?

GH: Pardon?

SF: When you left camp to work on the farms, did you expect to find people that were this crazy or hostile toward Japanese?

GH: No, we didn't, and the guy that hired us was a Russian guy, and he was real helpful. I mean, he really did a lot for us, you know. Worked for him for about three weeks, I don't think it was even a month that we were there. That was a hard-working family, too. And even when we came back, when we left there, coming back to camp, we had to make a transfer on the bus. We went to Billings, Montana, from where we were, and we did some shopping there and had a real good meal. And we went to a place called Deaver, that was the changeoff where you change buses to get off, to go to Heart Mountain. And we had a problem with a bunch of young rabble-rousers, you know. But nothing happened, just, just a lot of name-callings and stuff.

SF: Did you think that you were actually going to get into a physical fight with them?

GH: Yeah, they wanted to.

SF: So the Nisei guys would always hang together and really put up a good defense, so to speak, huh?

GH: Pardon?

SF: The guys, the Nisei guys you were with, they would always put up a good defense when, when they were threatened by these kind of people.

GH: Yeah.

SF: Was it like they'd only take so much? I mean, you could call, with the people calling you "Jap" or whatever, how'd that work? I mean, would you try, always try to keep a low profile and only sort of respond if people really pushed you hard?

GH: Well, in this particular case, the biggest guy, he was going to... going to pick a fight with one of the guys, and I was the smallest guy so he wanted to fight me, you know. And I said, "Fine, I'll take you on." And he kind of changed his mind, because seemed like I was kind of too willing to. But yeah, we had some... that was the only two bad experiences we had working, working out of camp. I know some guys had some real tough times.

SF: So was the reputation of places that hired the Niseis out of camp, was the thought that it would be likely that you would get ripped off or hassled, or what? Did people expect to get a fair, square deal when they went out to work on these farms?

GH: Well, the people that we worked with?

SF: Uh-huh.

GH: Usually when you went out to work for somebody, they usually treated you pretty good. They didn't give you a hard time or anything. Because we went out to Denver a few times and worked in, in the hotels or produce market, or even made munitions boxes. And everyone we worked for treated us fairly well.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.