Densho Digital Archive - Henry Fukuhara Interview (denshovh-fhenry-01-0011)

<Begin Segment 11>

JA: Did you... did I understand you did some paintings, some oil paintings or watercolors?

HF: Well, I, I took some things with me and I did, I did a few paintings, but that didn't, that didn't last very long because I... end of the first year that we were there, the sugar beet companies from Colorado and Utah came into camp to recruit male help because the, the young men in the farm areas were all, went into the army, so then they didn't have any labor, so they got permission to come into the camp to recruit, recruit labor. So, we took that opportunity to, to go out from camp, to go out and work and maybe find a place to resettle. So, I and let's see... two brothers, I and two brothers went out first up to Shelley, Idaho, and we were fortunate that we were placed on a, on a sugar beet company property where there was a vacant house. So we lived there. And then the other brother came by himself later on, and then my youngest brother, he was still in high school, so he had to go to school so he couldn't come out there and work with us.

JA: And then when the growing season was over you would go back to Manzanar?

HF: Yeah, we, we worked, we were out, we worked on the sugar beet farm. First we worked on the sugar beet farm thinning beets, and then, then after the thinning of the beets, then you would go and pick potatoes, and then, and then the sugar beets would come into time to pick, so then we would pick our sugar beets. And you'd pick sugar beets -- they give you a long knife about that long with a hook on it, so you, you'd hook the beet and lift it and cut the top off and put it in a, in a roll, and then they would come up and, they would come along and gather that and take it to the mill. But we did that until the ground started to freeze and then you couldn't lift the beet out of the ground, and that got to be around Thanksgiving, so that's when we went back to camp. We went back to camp and we had Thanksgiving in camp. So that, so then...

JA: Tell me about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Do you remember anything about those holidays in camp?

HF: No, I really don't remember, I don't remember much about Thanksgiving or Christmas, because we had no -- we didn't have any Christmas trees, we didn't exchange gifts. But I was, I was... I always sent Christmas cards when we, before evacuation, so I wanted to send Christmas cards to our friends outside. So I was wondering, "How am I going to do that?" I didn't have any paper. I didn't have -- so, I got the idea of taking the -- I don't see that kind of paper today -- it had a brown paper that was the... towel, a paper towel, a brown one that it folded, it was folded and you, and you pick one up and then the next one would come up, and I used that as, I made a Christmas card out of that, and I, and I mailed it. And, so, that's what I did for my Christmas card, and I still have that one that I have. It's at home. But, as far as anything happening for Christmas, I don't remember. If you were, if you were a child going to school, maybe they had something to do with it in school, but otherwise I wouldn't know.