<Begin Segment 11>
KL: Where did you go?
SS: To one of the farms, picked potatoes and onions, and I'm not a farm girl. And the other girls were raised on the farm, you know, they'd go out picking. My sister and I would go down one block, they'll go down the block and back, we're halfway down the block, so they had to come help us.
KL: Was it your younger sister who went, too? Who went with you, which sister?
SS: My sister?
KL: Uh-huh.
SS: Haruko.
KL: She went to the farm with you?
SS: Yeah.
KL: Did someone teach you?
SS: Huh?
KL: Did someone teach you how to...
SS: They had to teach us how to pick the potatoes. But we weren't very fast. The others were so fast.
KL: They had grown up on farms?
SS: Right.
KL: Who did, did you go with friends?
SS: Yes. It was fun, you know, to get out of camp.
KL: How did you get to the farm?
SS: I think they picked us up in a truck.
KL: Do you remember the owners or the...
SS: No.
KL: What was your housing? What was your housing on the farm?
SS: Oh, we just went out and came back for the day.
KL: Oh, okay.
SS: We didn't stay.
KL: Were these farms that were operated by Minidoka?
SS: No.
KL: They were private?
SS: Private, yeah. Because I think they needed the workers.
KL: Yeah, they did.
SS: Because of the war. You know, right now they have illegal immigrants coming in? Well, we were the immigrants then, I guess.
KL: How long did you do that, just one season?
SS: Not too long, just one season.
KL: And you were picking potatoes, you said?
SS: Digging potatoes and onions.
KL: Did you do other things to try to fight the boredom?
SS: In camp?
KL: Uh-huh.
SS: Yeah, there were a lot of things to do. In the wintertime the canal would freeze over, we'd go skating, ice skating. Well, I worked.
KL: What was your work?
SS: Secretarial work, I worked in the engineers office first, and then I went to the school system and worked for the counselor at high school, superintendent.
KL: Did you interact with the students in the high school?
SS: Pardon?
KL: Did you interact with the students in the high school?
SS: No, no, I was in the office.
KL: Who was in the office? Were there other teachers who were incarcerated, Japanese American teachers or Caucasian?
SS: In the office, no. There were a couple of other friends, couple friends of mine who were there working in the office. I had another friend working in the principal's office.
KL: Well, did your friends say anything about the principal? What were their impressions of the principal? Didn't really see him?
SS: Right.
KL: I just was curious to know about the administrators...
SS: I thought you had read something about the principal.
KL: No, I know very little about Minidoka. I know much more about some of the other camps, but I know very little about Minidoka.
SS: He was a very nice person, I liked him.
KL: And I am curious about who, what motivated people to come and be a principal or a teacher in the camps, it's kind of an interesting collection of people.
<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.