Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Victor Ikeda Interview
Narrator: Victor Ikeda
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: November 6, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-ivictor-01-0048

<Begin Segment 48>

VI: And I graduated and got a job.

RP: At Boeing.

VI: Boeing, yeah.

RP: And you stayed with Boeing?

VI: No, I stayed with them, and all of the sudden-- I had this transportation major. I thought travel agencies was a good job, but I didn't want to travel at that time. Then all of the sudden, there was an offering for a transportation, transportation agent with the Department of Army with the Quartermaster Corps. And the job was a transportation agency to deliver food to all the armed services. So I applied for it, and I got the job. So I got a civil service job, federal job, as a travel agency with the Quartermaster, they called it Quartermaster Market Center. And what we did was we sent all the food to all the military installations around the Northwest. Well, we sent it, the Quartermaster Market Centers supplied all the military installations around the world. So we supplied Fort Lewis, we supplied the, we had the four area, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and we supplied food to them.

[Interruption]

VI: So from there, I stayed there for about eighteen years. Being with the Quartermaster Market Center, I had a chance to take trips all over the military installations around the Northwest, and I became a purchasing agent, and I was able to replace some of the other purchasing agents of other regions, like the Chicago region, so I got a chance to see the military installations there. I had a chance to go up to Alaska, we supplied the so-called, the radar sites, the site stations up there. And they used to say the perfect supply was when you threw the last can of beer into the ocean, the supply ship was coming in. [Laughs] Anyway, I stayed there, and then they says they're gonna consolidate the, the account savings into a smaller, so all of a sudden they had a job with OEO, Office of Economic Opportunity. So I applied, and I was with the military for about eighteen years. I went to Office of Economic Opportunity, it was completely a different thing, because now, you had a whole bunch of people that were in the Peace Corps, and they were, the office of -- I don't know if you know what OEO did, but they had these community action agencies throughout the Northwest, throughout the country. And they were the ones that supported the community, the poor and all that, so they would send grants to OEO and they'd grant 'em, and I became a budget officer with them. But it's quite a different experience; you're with a strict military-type job, and then you go here with "flower children." [Laughs] They had flowers sticking out of their cubicles, all had master's degrees, they attended the Peace Corps. Well, we lasted for about three years when they consolidated it, and then we were in the same building as the Department of Labor. By that time I was a budget officer, purchasing agent, so I applied for a job with the Department of Labor and then I spent the rest of my working life -- which was about fifteen years -- with the Department of Labor.

RP: You spent a lot of time in the government.

VI: Yeah, thirty-six years. And then I finally retired as the regional administrator for Region 10 with the Department of Labor, which had the Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and... Washington, Oregon, Alaska... I'm missing one. I guess that's it. Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and... yeah, Idaho. [Laughs]

<End Segment 48> - Copyright © 2007 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.