<Begin Segment 16>

RP: I wanted to step back a little and talk a little bit more about your experience in Idaho with picking potatoes. Where did you go in Idaho, Kaz?

KY: Well, it was close to a town called Pocatello. Pocatello, Idaho.

RP: And how did you travel up there?

KY: We... how did we get there? We must have gone by bus or... from from Manzanar we had to go to Reno. That was the closest, the closest big, big town. And you could take a bus to there to different parts of the country. And that's the way I think we went to Pocatello. But...

RP: Where did you end up staying when you got there?

KY: Well, like I say, there was this camp just like Manzanar and yeah, only it was just this big, big building and everybody stayed there. That's where we slept. And that's... I don't know how we got to know about this camp, but that's what we did. We ended up there. And from there, the farmers from all over that city would come and say, "I need some men to come work on my farm." And that's how he got to pick the workers that he wanted. But there was one incident while we were there, they had expected us to come to the camp and... but there was some farmers that said, "Oh, we're not gonna wait for these Japs. We'll wait for the other, other people like Mexicans or whatever it was to come. And we'll hire them. We're not gonna, we're not gonna hire these Japs." And so they didn't, they didn't come to our camp there to hire anybody. Well, what happened was that the, this other people, they didn't get there. They couldn't make it or something. And so here they were, they were left without any workers. So they finally had to come to us and beg for us to work for them. So we got, they got paid back. Some of us said, "Well, hell with you guys." So, that's what happened.

RP: So you'd go out every day...

KY: Uh-huh.

RP: ...with, with the same farmer or different farmer?

KY: No, different farmers.

RP: Uh-huh. And what was your experience like on the, on these farms?

KY: Oh, it was nice. It was... all you see is rows and rows of potatoes. See the end of the row? That's how far we gotta go. And you look at that. And the farmer had what they call, I guess these are milk cans where, like on a dairy farm. I don't... you can just imagine these big old cans, what they kept milk in. Well, one of the guys, that was my partner, he was the big husky guy, but he was kind of simple. And our leader would tell him, "Hey, Joe, go get that thing with water in it and bring it so we can drink water." And so he would go over there and pick it up and we had water for the day.

RP: Describe how you picked, the process of picking the potatoes.

KY: Well, there were these, it's metal, and they're about this high, wire, like a wire basket so that no dirt can go in there, just the potato. And you'd have to be on your haunch and you'd put the basket in between you and you shovel the potato into that basket. And then, and so you worked in pair, okays. Whoever gets the, this bucket full would pick up the canvas bag that was laying on the field there -- the farmer would come and distribute all these baskets on, on the ground, see. So the first one that gets a basket full, he picked up the gunny sack and would hold it and his partner would get the basket and dump the potatoes in there. So we, what we learned is every time we'd collect about half a sack of potatoes -- that's what we're paid by, half a sack -- and we'd fill the basket, the bunny sack full of potatoes, lay them on the side and go to the next one. And that's what we did all day long.

RP: Do you remember how much you got for that?

KY: I can't remember. We left that up to the leader of our, our group. He'd take care of...

RP: He negotiated the...

KY: Yeah, he was the one that took care of the, our, our group.

RP: What was his name?

KY: Dan Sugimoto. He was married and much older than us.

RP: Now as a kid you were raised in Santa Monica. You never grew up on a farm.

KY: No.

RP: And so what was, what was it like for you to be out there harvesting potatoes?

KY: Well, it was just like anything else. You get used to it. And it was hard in the first time. For the, for the first week or so my back ached like hell because picking these potatoes was no easy job. But all of us had to go through the same experience and we got used to it, and we liked picking potatoes, better than, than picking up sugar beets. When you're picking sugar beets, this knife, it was about this high [Gestures about four inches with fingers] it was about this long with a handle on the end and then there was a hook on the end, end of the knife. And you'd the same thing as you do in picking potatoes. You go over there, the sugar beet was uprooted from the ground and was laying on the ground. And you go and you'd pick it up with the hook that's on the end of the knife, you'd hook it and you'd bring it up and in one motion you pick it up and then you'd grab the beet -- it's like a radish, you know -- and you grab the radish and then once you got the thing off the ground you'd take the knife off the, off the beet and you'd chop the greens off of it. And then you'd throw the sugar beet on the side and so that the farmer could pick those up. That's what topping the sugar beets was like. But that was harder work to us anyway. We didn't like it much. We liked picking the potatoes better.

RP: And how long did you work out in...

KY: Well, the season wasn't very long I don't think. A couple months or thereabouts. And then we'd have to go back to camp again.

RP: And this was during the fall?

KY: Yeah, it was in the fall. Yeah, I remember I went the first time in 1943 after graduating high school. I joined this guy, I don't know how I got to know this guy, Dan Sugimoto. But...

RP: Did you, while you were at this camp, I guess a labor camp, did you go into Pocatello at all for any social activities?

KY: No, just before we were to come back to camp we all went to Pocatello to shop. And then we came home.

RP: What did you shop for?

KY: I forgot what I was shopping for. I think probably a coat or something. I didn't have a sport coat. So I must have bought a sport coat. I don't know. It's so hard to remember all the things you did that many years ago.

RP: Sure is.

KY: How many years ago?

RP: That's too long to remember. But you're doing a great job. So you made one visit just before you came back.

KY: Uh-huh. Yeah.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.