<Begin Segment 22>

KP: Was housing and labor segregated at Seabrook Farms?

SY: It was at the beginning.

KP: And that changed?

SY: Oh, yes. They were... at first we were all, except for the Negroes, they had their own table because they couldn't work with the whites. They had their own table. But they mixed us in with the women that lived in Bridgeton, New Jersey, and they were mostly older women or handicapped women that used to work there, because most of the handicapped people, or people who were young, went for better jobs. So when we went in, we worked with the white people, so to speak. But they gave us two different wages. There was the Negro who had their own wage, and the Japanese had their own wage, and the white people had their own wages. The white, they got the most money, and we got the next one. And then, of course, the Negroes. Okay, so they had taken a survey saying the white people, they're older people, they're handicapped people, they're not young, but they're steady workers, okay. The Japanese people, they're young. "We need the young ones to run it." Of course, these are migrant workers. So if they left, there were no biggie. So the housing was so bad, nobody wanted to live in those houses. And if they didn't, wasn't gonna do anything, a lot of them, like my mother and father, they did stay.

But later on, after I left, they had a bungalow where the migrant workers lived, and they turned that into an apartment and my mother lived there. It had a little kitchen and two bedrooms. And so my brother lived in one section and my and father lived in the other. And they lived there, and it was, it had a little kitchen, so they were able to not have to eat in the cafeteria or have to buy. And so when, Sunday, Bridgeton, New Jersey, closed. So everything was dead there, the only thing was the church was going on, and you couldn't buy anything. And so nobody liked the idea of having to work on Sunday. So Saturday night after work, everybody caught the bus, and they would go to town. And you knew exactly when the bus was gonna come back, and catch the bus coming back. Well, that limited to your spending time, too, but that was okay.

Anyway, going back to Seabrook Farm, they had to get somebody into the office because the office was running by just a handful, and they were older women, and they were slower, whatever. So they started recruiting the Japanese in the office, the office started taking, they practically took over the whole office. In fact, it was just the whole office. And I thought, oh, maybe I should go in there. But I got into the office, and I didn't, they had me in as timekeeper, and I didn't like that. So I went back into the production, and by then they had one table strictly for Japanese. And that was the group that did the Birds Eye, because the Birds Eye were the most... oh, should I say, the most... they demanded the best. Not only quality-wise, it had to be packed right, it had to be exactly the same amount, weighed, everything had to be perfect as far as Seabrook. And if you lost your Seabrook, I mean, Birds Eye, that was like cutting your throat because that was where the money was coming in.

WP: What is the Birds Eye?

SY: Birds Eye frozen foods, okay. They were the best. They got the best money. And then came the Pickwick. So the Pickwick's, the other tables got it. And then they had trouble with the Negro table because they would be gone away from the table, and nobody was able to continue packing the food. And the machine is going constantly, and if you can't catch it, by the end, it doesn't weigh right, it's got leaves in it, you know, things like this. The box is broken. So then they tried to get the Negro people mixed in with the rest, and that didn't work out because the Japanese had to redo a lot of the packing because they were working on the Birds Eye, and they didn't want to lose the Birds Eye. And it was a chaotic mess. In fact, they had to put a time table, time machine, checkout machine, so that if you went out into the bathroom, you had to check out. And when you came out, you checked in again, and that's how bad it was.

WP: What was Pickwick?

SY: Pickwick.

WP: And what is that?

SY: That's a frozen food company.

WP: Okay, so Birds Eye and Pickwick are frozen food companies?

SY: Uh-huh. They had about four or five different companies. And it all depending on what company you were packing for, it was a paper that you had to change, because it was paper that said Pickwick, Birds Eye, Seabrook Farm.

WP: Did these different groups of people interact socially, outside of work ever?

SY: No, because you were so damn tired by the time you were... it's eleven hours' work every day for six days.

WP: So there was no social life?

SY: No, there is no social life.

WP: Were there any recreational activities or community...

SY: Well, kids did have recreation, I guess. I never did. You just didn't have time. You were dead tired when you finished working there. Because the production is constant. It's not... it's not... you had to keep going, because this machine goes, and you have to move with the machine. And they don't stop that machine unless the machine breaks. So you're constantly going and going, and so when you have one person going into the bathroom, you really have to work twice as hard to keep up with, to make up for that one last person. Because nothing stops until...

WP: What did your parents do there?

SY: She did the same thing, packing. Packing and sorting and things like this.

WP: And your father?

SY: My father was the one that did the loading of the food. There's a great big machine up there, and there's boxes full of, let's say, peas. And it's frozen because frozen peas works easier than a fresh pea because fresh peas would jam up the machine. Whereas a frozen one is hard, so it would freeze the machine and break it up. And once that machine breaks, then that whole table is sitting there doing nothing. So they don't like that, and they have a certain limit to how long it should take to get that order fixed or whatever it is.

WP: How did they feel about being there? What was their impression of Seabrook Farms?

SY: Of who?

WP: Your parents.

SY: My parents? They were very happy because they were getting paid. And they didn't have to worry about speaking English. But when the wintertime came, they didn't have any work, so therefore that's when my mother learned how to become an American citizen.

WP: And did your younger brothers go to school, was there a school there that they attended?

SY: My brother went to school there in Seabrook, uh-huh. They had a school there.

WP: One of your brothers would have been getting to the age he would have graduated, right? Or was he old enough to work at all at Seabrook Farms?

SY: No, he never worked at Seabrook. Because he graduated high school in 1950 and they came back here.

WP: How would you say you were treated by the company officials?

SY: As a whole, individually, I mean, I was a nobody to him, because he was a big company. As a whole, I was, we were very well respected by Seabrook company because we were good workers, and we were the strength behind the company. Because he couldn't survive, he couldn't survive without us, because it was going from bad to worse when we got there.

WP: And what was the transition like from life at Manzanar to life at Seabrook Farms? Was it a difficult adjustment?

SY: [Laughs] Well, when we were in camp, we didn't have to work very hard. But by golly, when we went to Seabrook, did we work. We worked, because you had to, you couldn't work on your speed, you had to work on their speed, because the machine was working, and you had to keep up with the machine. And it wasn't only you, but it was the whole assembly line that had to keep up with it. It was my first real job, other than the file clerk, and it was... it was a learning experience. But I don't think I noticed other people like I did when I lived in Seabrook Farms because I was not, I was not familiar. If you remember, in Los Angeles, there weren't any, in fact, colored folks there. There weren't. It was very unusual. When I went to, I mean, like I said, I grew up with Mexicans. But the Mexican people are very family-oriented, but not the people in the Deep South.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.