<Begin Segment 15>

RP: I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and offer up another question to you here. You went out on an agricultural furlough.

KY: Yeah.

RP: How did that come about?

KY: Well, they would have these things every year in the fall I guess when harvesting approached. And I got wind of it and so this guy that I really didn't know that well, but he lived in the next block, he was a fellow that was quite a bit older than I and as a matter of fact, he had a wife and a child, he lived next block, 18. I don't know how we got together but he says, "How would you like to be in my group and go to Idaho?" I said, "Sure, I'll go. I want to make some money and buy some clothes." And so that's how I got to know him. And he was a, he was a real nice guy. I think he just passed away. But he was from Venice area. And he and this other guy was... you had to work in pairs in potato picking. And the guy that I ended up with was a big guy, real husky, he was a weightlifter and so he was built like a horse. Big guy. And here I am, a small guy, smallest in the group. So he and I became partners. And it turned out to be real good. We worked real good together. And there was two, four... I think there was six in our group. And that's what made our group. But later on, after we came back, there was another offer made for work in a defense plant. And all they made was kitchen wares. And that happened in 1944. Yeah, 1944. And you paid your way out there and they paid your way back to camp. That was, that was how it was arranged. And so I jumped at that too. And the same guy that I went Idaho with, he was in our group. We used to regard him as the leader of our group. And we went to Chicago again for that particular reason, for the defense plant was right next to the Chicago White Sox ball team. We were, our building was practically in the backyard of that, the defense plant. And we made anything that was, had to do with kitchen wares, ovens and then I was on a punch press making these little can openers. You know when you go in the army you get a K-ration. And in the K-ration you get a can opener. All it is a piece of metal about this big, small think like that, and like a hinge. And it'd open up like this and you just go like this and it opens the can. It tears into the can. And that was with every K-ration, you'd get one of these can openers. I made, I don't know, millions of 'em.

RP: So you were a punch press operator?

KY: No, I wasn't punch press. It was, it was already... I don't know how it was, became to, how they made it, but all I remember was... I guess there was a punch press for some, for some reason. And we had to put these together and it made it so you can, you can open these cans with it. It was real convenient. I should have saved that as a souvenir. But, that's what I did. I made millions of those things. And then later on I graduated to another item that we, that they were making. Probably another punch press. But I remember one incident where I was on this platform and there was this escalator that came down from upstairs to downstairs, and it, and the thing was, here was this that comes down and every once in a while, every few feet, there was this metal thing that came so that you can, you can put these packages on this thing and these retainers were a few feet away from each other and it would come down and then go up again and then come down again like this [Motions up and down with hand]. And I stuck my foot out a little bit too far and the thing that's on there came and hit my shoe and almost tore my nail off. That hurt me quite a bit. But I had to go, go to work with slippers on practically. But it healed quick enough. I was able to survive.

RP: So, Kaz, how did you get this job in the first place?

KY: I don't know. That, the camp arranged it. You paid your way out there and they paid your way back.

RP: Were there a number of Japanese Americans working in the plant?

KY: There was when we got there. There was a lot of Japanese girls that worked there, like secretaries or clerks. I remember when, when we got to the defense plant I saw these girls working there and they were all Japanese. A lot of 'em were. But, we worked in a separate area because we were part of the, not the office but the production part of the group. But it wasn't such a bad job.

RP: Where did you live in Chicago while you were working there?

KY: We lived right off of Thirty-fifth Street, which is near the ballpark. It's in a black area. It was a poor area. But that's the only place that would, that we could find a place to live. And the owner of that apartment was two Caucasian sisters. And they were the owners of the, of this apartment. And they loved us because we always, always paid our rent on time. I guess she wasn't used to that living, because it was in a black neighborhood and I guess people didn't pay their bills quickly enough. But we paid our bills every time on time when the time came. So they really treated us nice. They would make our beds for us when we left to go to work. And they really treated us like kings. Yeah. I remember one of 'em, her name was Mrs. Bishop, and when I came back to Chicago after going back to camp, I met her on the street, right near where I lived. It was far away from where, where she had her apartment but I met Mrs. Bishop on the road one time. It was, it was so nice to see her again. But most of the occupants of that apartment were Japanese guys. I guess one would tell the other, "Hey, why don't you move over here?" And so there was a lot of Japanese guys that lived in that apartment and we were one of 'em.

RP: So, how many other guys did you live with?

KY: Well, I think there was six of us.

RP: All from Manzanar?

KY: Yeah, I think so. And then there was other, other groups that live in that same apartment too but they came from someplace else I think. But it was nice. We didn't mind it. And the two sisters treated us very well because we always paid our bills.

RP: So how did you feel about being out of camp and in sort of more normal life?

KY: Mainstream, huh?

RP: Yeah, Mainstream.

KY: Yeah, well, it was nice to be back in America again, so to speak. And being able to go to the movies when you wanted to. Things like that. Normal living, which we missed in camp. And... I remember while I was there this, this girl that, I think she was in my class in Japanese school in Santa Monica before the war, but then she moved away. And, but I remembered her and her brother, I met her brother when my sister came from camp to Chicago. He was one of the guys that met them at the bus depot or train station, I forget what. And I met him and it surprised me who he was. And I asked him, "Where's your sister?" And he told me where his sister was. It was a town called Naperville, near Chicago. And so I says, "Give me her address. I'd like to go see her." So, he gave me her address. So later on when I had a chance I looked her up. I had to take a bus or a train, I'm not sure. I went to see her. And her father was with a sanatorium, where they, where sick people were living there and he was the cook, or somethin' like that. And she was going to the high school there. And so I met her. And we became good friends. She was my girlfriend after that. [Laughs] Yeah. And I used to see her almost every weekend and so we had a nice, I had a nice time finding her and being her boyfriend. And then when it was time for me to go back to camp my sister knew her real well too but she wanted to see me off at the station. And my sister, my sister told her, "I'll take you there." And somehow they got lost and I never, they never did reach the bus station or the train station where we were gonna take off to go back to camp. So I never got to see her after that. I saw her again way after the war back here. She moved up to the Bay Area. Married a, married a minister who became very popular in the Bay Area. She married him. But it was nice seeing her again.

RP: How did, how did it feel to come back to Manzanar after being out in America for six months and working and now you're going back to camp?

KY: Going back to camp?

RP: Yeah.

KY: Well...

RP: How did that feel?

KY: Well, camp was like home to us because we were there for so long. And we felt strange going to a place like Chicago, a busy metropolitan city. But once you got used to it, it was nothin'. I liked going to Chicago. There wasn't any prejudice. And we made that our home after a while. My friend went to Cleveland. And I thought about going to Cleveland because of him but I decided that Chicago was the place. I liked Chicago.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.