<Begin Segment 12>

KL: But when did you know you wanted to try to get out?

RF: I don't recall when that happened, but I think it was primarily an opportunity. I wasn't planning on it, wasn't thinking about it. We had a very good friend, his name was Henry Ushijima, and he was, he told our family and me about this group of men, young men, who were leaving to go to Chicago, most of them to continue their college schooling, some to go to work. And they were being sponsored by... not sponsored, what's the word? Led by a former administrator, his name was Temple, I think it was Thomas Temple. And Henry encouraged me to go and finish high school out of camp, because I was not happy with the schooling in camp. It had just started, and I wasn't impressed with the teachers. I was very, very bored and upset of schooling, so it was an opportunity. And I know my parents were not in favor of my leaving on my own, being sixteen, seventeen, but they had the comfort of knowing that Mr. Temple was there, he was assuring them that he would be sure to watch over me.

KL: And he was at Manzanar and he was able to have these conversations with your friends?

RF: Yes, yes.

KL: Was he a school administrator?

RF: I don't know... no, he wasn't a school administrator, he was an administrator in the camp. I'm not sure what he did. He was a very nice elderly gentleman. So he took a group of us out. I'm not sure what the number was, but something like about fifteen, twenty people, men. I was the only high school person there, the others were either going to college or looking for employment. So Mr. Temple took us out and rented an apartment on the south side of Chicago, so it was like a boarding house, and all the rooms had beds, cots lined up. And I started... this was, I guess it was just about the beginning of summer, summer of 1943 I think it was. I started summer school, and then Mr. Temple had a heart attack and died. But I was with a group of real great guys, and I'm not sure how I supported myself then.

KL: He had been living in Chicago with you?

RF: Yes, he was living in the same apartment. And so I continued high school, summer school, and then decided I'd better find a job to earn some money. And fortunate enough that some of the men were working at a wholesale book supply facility, company, and they had some opening, so I went to work there, working in a... it's kind of like a stockroom. So I was earning some money to pay for my way, but I needed to finish high school. So in the fall I started high school, at Hyde Park High School, which was in the south side. [Wipes eye] Excuse me. Started high school there, Hyde Park High School, and was fortunate enough to find a job from four to midnight, after school, which was in the city, so I had to take the Elevated train to get to my job. So I'd go to school during the day, and at three o'clock I'd hop on the Elevated and go up to my job which was near Chinatown, to a place called Cunio Press, which is a bookbinding company. And I worked the four to midnight shift with two other Polish guys, who were both not fit enough to go into the service. And our job was to glue the backs of books after they were sewn together, and then to trim the books ready for the cover to go on. So it was heavy work, and big presses to cut the books, big like a guillotine, to cut the (edges of the) books, and it was quite an experience. So I'd work 'til midnight, go through the dark Chinatown to get to the Elevated, which was kind of spooky. I got home about twelve-thirty, or one o'clock. And let's see. At that time, the group moved to another facility, more of a home instead of an apartment, so they could have more space.

KL: You stayed together with the group from Manzanar?

RF: Yeah, so with the group. I was further away from high school, and walked through a park to get to high school. But it was a more comfortable home, and once I got out of school I had to get the furnaces going, and that was my job before I headed off to my job. And then around after a month or two, the high school principal called me and he said, "You don't have a taxpaying guardian that's paying taxes to the city. And so you can't come to a public school unless you pay private tuition." So I said, "Well, what do I do? I need to go to school." Said, "Well, you have to pay tuition." So I pondered that problem and fortunately at that time, my sister had relocated from camp to Minnesota, to Minneapolis, and she had found out I could go to public school in Minneapolis without paying tuition. So I packed my bags, said goodbye to everybody, and went to Minneapolis. And had to find a place to stay, and fortunately, God is always watching over me, they found a, the Wesley Foundation, in the basement of the Methodist church off of campus of the University of Minnesota, was housing Japanese students primarily, college students, to a place to stay in their basement. So there were about six of us. Couple of them were working, couple of them were going to college, and two of us were going, still high school, a fellow by the name of Tom Sasaki and myself. And high school was two blocks away called Marshall High School, and so I was able to go to public school there. Let's see, Uni High, Manzanar... so it was my fifth high school, trying to finish my senior year.

KL: Just trying to finish at this point, yeah.

RF: So there were a lot of distractions. So anyway, I finally finished and graduated in winter class of 1944. I normally should have graduated in summer of '43, so it was only a half year delay. But I also had to work and earn a living to pay for things, so I worked as a busboy in a cafe, then later on a friend of mine, Tosh Nitta, found a job in a foundry for me to work with him sifting the sand, mixing it with (coal dust) to get it ready for the next day's crew of mold makers, who would take the sand and make molds out of them, I think pour casting, iron castings in the evening at the end of the day. And we'd come in at the end of the day and pull out these white hot castings and mix the sand with water and (coal dust), so it'd be ready for the mold makers the next day. So that was the job, it lasted from about four or five o'clock in the evening to about ten. Dirtiest job you can think of.

KL: It probably made college seem pretty appealing.

RF: Pardon?

KL: That probably made college study seem pretty appealing?

RF: [Laughs] Yeah. Well, I was still in high school.

KL: Yeah.

RF: So that was the worst, that was the worst and dirtiest job I've ever had. It makes, to me it makes gardening a very nice job. And a lot of people complain about how hard gardening is, but you're outdoors, you're with flowers, you're with sun, and if it rains you don't have to work. Here in this god-forbidden factory, or if you have coldness all over, white hot castings, and almost burned my foot off. And you come back, you're so black, it's like a chimney sweep, you're black from head to toe. It's in your nose, it's everywhere. The Midwest has the hardest jobs that one can ever find. The poor souls in Minnesota who have to work, in the Midwest who have to work in these kind of jobs, it's just terrible. But it's work, right?

KL: Yeah.

RF: I had several jobs like that in the Midwest. I worked in a grain factory helping to take corn grain out of boxcars, so they'd go down, up into the silos. OSHA was not around in those days, so there's not masks to cover you from all that dust. And you get in these boxcars, it's like walking in a pile of sand, get the grain and push it down into the opening to get it in for the silo. [Laughs] It was just terrible, dust is all over the place. So anyway, that was my experiences in the Midwest.

KL: Yeah, yeah.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.