<Begin Segment 19>

RM: So then when your parents got out to Henderson, that was their savings was the six hundred dollars.

GO: I guess they'd get something from the government. I don't know what they, like we worked, we got money, and we'd get money for clothing. But I don't know if they got, how much they get. Well, they were working, so they get sixteen dollars.

RM: Yeah, sixteen a month.

GO: Sixteen.

RM: The big bucks, right? So what was... oh, go ahead?

GO: No, it's all right.

RM: What was Henderson like?

GO: Well, to me it's just like a farm. You had to get up and go to work. So it was just like old times, working on the farm.

RM: What kind of produce...

GO: Actually, I don't know what kind of produce they hired, I mean, harvested. I've got to ask my sister one of these days.

RM: And did you all live in a house that was on the farm?

GO: Yeah, they had a big house, two-story house.

RM: How long were you out there?

GO: I think we were out, this place about, over a year anyway, one or two years. And then we moved to Adams County near Denver, this was another farmer, where we worked during the summer, because over there you can't work in the winter because of the snow. So when it snowed, I went to work in downtown.

RM: In Denver?

GO: In Denver.

RM: What did you do?

GO: I worked in the egg canneries place, where I'm in the back and I feed the girls the boxes of eggs, and they candled it, they sort 'em out, dirty, cracked, large or small. So anyway, right after I get there, I get a couple of eggs, put it on the heaters. You know these old fashioned heaters they have on top? When I put a couple, two or three eggs up there, and then in no time, I can eat 'em. These women that sort the eggs, when they finish, I had to feed 'em, that's my job. [Laughs]

RM: You got to have lunch on the job, then.

GO: Yeah, well, plus, that's a plus. I tell this story to Dorothy and she just laughs.

RM: Did they know that you were eating some of the eggs?

GO: They know what's going on.

RM: So you did that during the winter months then, and then you'd head back to the farm in the spring?

GO: Yeah. So I think we stayed there about one or two years. But that was a good experience.

RM: Where in Denver did you live?

GO: Adams County, that's right off of Denver, they call it Adams County. So from there I worked, went to Denver to work.

RM: Did you drive to work every day?

GO: Yeah.

RM: So how did you... it seems like a silly question, but how did you get a car?

GO: Well, we had a car. We had, see my brother-in-law had a car, two of them. We had two cars and one truck.

RM: Did they come with the farm or did you buy 'em when you got out.

GO: I think they bought 'em, or I don't know how they got 'em, but they got 'em. And we ended up with that. And so after the Denver job, we headed back to the San Fernando Valley. We had two cars and a truck going all the way to California from Denver.

RM: Did your sister return with you, the one who had married the guy that she met in Henderson?

GO: Yeah, they had a car. And then my other sister had a car, and we had the truck, so we had to load all the things we had on the truck, and caravan, going to San Fernando Valley.

RM: So I want to jump back to what you were telling me about Fujiko relocating out of Manzanar and then working as a librarian in downtown L.A. Was she doing this while you were in Henderson? Was she in downtown L.A., being a librarian?

GO: Yeah.

RM: Did you two stay in touch after...

GO: Oh, yeah, we stayed in touch. We had a letter about so... I mean, I kept all the letters, I mean, she kept all my letters. Her letters are gone. She kept it, and then when she passed, we were cleaning things out, and the kid says, "Hey, we got a stack of letters here." I said, oh, I can't burn it. So later I wrote to her, and so what we did was we put it in a container and wrap it up good, and we put it in with her casket, so that's gone.

RM: That sounds like the best place.

GO: Anyway, her things she likes, we put in the casket.

RM: She sounds like she was a librarian in spirit, she saved so many things.

GO: Oh, we still have things of hers.

RM: Yeah.

GO: But some of the things in camp we got to look through yet, but there might be some good stuff yet.

RM: So what did she do while she... so she worked in L.A. while her family was still in Manzanar. Did her family rejoin her in Los Angeles?

GO: Yeah. It wasn't too long after she relocated, the family relocated, too.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.