<Begin Segment 22>

RP: And how long were you there for?

KN: Gee, two, three years I think.

RP: Really?

KN: Yeah. And then some...

Off Camera: When did you leave for Brigham by? 1944. So you probably weren't there that long? 'Cause you went to Brigham from there.

KN: Yeah.

Off Camera: You got married in October of '44.

KN: Yeah. And then those guys, they went back to Manzanar.

Off Camera: They did.

KN: After, after they, after they worked for the sugar beet, they went back to Manzanar again. So there was no place for me to go so I...

RP: So you and Tom went to Brigham City?

KN: Yeah.

RP: And you got married there.

KN: Yeah. 'Cause my oldest sister was already there.

RP: Oh, right.

KN: Yeah.

RP: And...

KN: And her husband had a job in a cannery or something.

RP: Cannery. And what was your wedding like?

KN: Nothing. We just come, everybody, Justice of the Peace, Mormon Justice of the Peace, Mormon. Yeah. We only had two witnesses, the lady clerk that was in the office and my brother-in-law. And we got married in the Justice of the Peace courthouse.

RP: Did you have a honeymoon?

KN: No. Where would we go? We didn't go anyplace. We just went back to work.

RP: And so what did you do for work? Did you work at the cannery?

KN: Well, I was a secretary. I was a stenographer. I did all, I did the office, I was the office manager. I did all the timekeeper for a hundred employees and all the foremans and everybody else. Oh, the book work I did for thirty, thirty-five cents an hour. That was the going rate at the time. Thirty-five cents an hour. I work eight hours, ten hours from morning when I get up to when everybody left, about six o'clock at night. I was there at the office all day from morning 'til night.

RP: And that was for the cannery?

KN: Yeah.

Off Camera: Pringle?

RP: Pringle Cannery?

KN: Yeah, Pringle, R.D. Pringle and Company. There's a frozen food company but they started as a cannery.

RP: Ah. And were there a number of Japanese Americans employed by the cannery?

KN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They went to recruit in Amache camp and all the concentration camp and oh, the people were waiting to get a job and go outside so we had a lot of all Japanese people from the camp, we hired them.

RP: How many, would you say there was several hundred?

KN: No, not that many. About fifty.

RP: Uh-huh.

KN: All this wartime experience you go back on it and it makes you wonder. I did all that?

RP: Yeah. That's an amazing feat.

KN: Yeah.

RP: You're, you have a payroll of hundreds and...

KN: I know.

RP: Did you, did you have other...

KN: And I had to weigh the farmer's trucks. We had a big scale. I have to weigh them, fruit full of trucks and I have to weigh them empty. I did that all day.

RP: You did that too?

KN: I did that too.

RP: Wow. And so what did your new husband do?

KN: He worked for the company.

RP: And what did he do for them?

KN: Oh, he drove a truck. Most of the time.

RP: And where did you live?

KN: Oh, there was a little room right next to the office. There's nothing there. We lived there. We just put a bed there and we lived there and I had worked and lived in one room.

RP: Wow.

KN: Office was next in the office, and then next to the office was one room. That's where we lived, in one room and I worked, I did the office. I weighed all the trucks. And I took time, time for all the... we had young kids from the high school, summer vacation they come to work. I had to make the timesheet. I have to get their social security number, and I did everything. I had a cost accountant, how much sugar we used. I can't believe I did all that for fifty-five cents an hour.

RP: That was a really big operation.

KN: Yeah, it was.

RP: Let's see, and how were you... what was your interaction like with the Mormon community? What was their attitude towards Japanese Americans, and you in particular?

KN: Oh, they were nice. Yeah. They were nice. I mean, they went through a lot of stuff that we went through, you know, they discriminated the Mormons in Utah and they had it hard time too. So they understood what we went through so we got along fine.

RP: Were they, were they out to convert you?

KN: I don't know. They were, they were mostly nice people.

RP: Uh-huh.

KN: 'Cause a lot of 'em are fruit growers anyway. They have, I have to be nice 'cause I have to weigh their fruit and I have to weigh them full and I have to weigh them empty again.

RP: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.