Densho Digital Archive - Henry Fukuhara Interview (denshovh-fhenry-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

JA: What did you do?

HF: I, I got a job working on the, on the survey crew, and the reason I got a job on the survey crew is I knew somebody that was working there so they said, "Yeah, we can use you," so I went to work for the survey crew. And so I was on the survey crew and as a surveyor I didn't know how to use a transit or those instruments, so all I did on the job was to, was to carry the chain around and they would tell me where to, where to spot the chain and they would measure whatever that needed measuring. But as a, being on the survey crew, one of the jobs was to survey their, the gravesite. You're working on the engineering department and then they, the boss, Mr. Sandrich, he would say to go and measure the, where they were going to dig for the gravesite. And then after they give you that job and then after you're done that, then the rest of the, rest of the time was yours. And the survey crew -- I don't know whether I'm supposed to say this or not -- but the survey crew had a, they had a truck assigned to them with a full tank of gas every day. So after our, whatever job that we had done, after we had that done, then we would go out of the camp and we would go fishing because there was three or four trout streams up there. So then... or we would go up to the foothills of the Sierra, the mountains there.

JA: Did anybody know you were doing that?

HF: Oh, friends did.

JA: How did you get out of camp if there were guards?

HF: Well, that side of the camp there wasn't any guards. The guards were only along the street, along the highway. Along that, along the back side was open, so you could -- and then so they built golf courses there and I don't think the golf course was within that, within the confines of the camp.

JA: So nobody in official capacity missed you?

HF: I don't think so. I --

JA: Did you catch any fish?

HF: Unless, unless we didn't, unless we didn't come back for a couple of days or something and then they would say, "Hey. what happened to the survey crew?"

HF: But otherwise we came back every day.

JA: Did you ever catch any fish?

HF: Oh yeah, we caught some fish.

JA: What'd you get?

HF: Trout. That's all there was, was trout up there. Yeah, so there were some nice trout up there, yeah.

JA: And then the next morning you go back to work and then play hooky again.

HF: Yeah. [Laughs]

JA: Tough life.

HF: Yeah, no, life up there was, it was simple, you know. I think for, for many, for many population of the Japanese that were farmers, I think it was a blessing to go to camp because they had a chance to rest, because when you were, if you were a farmer you worked seven days out of the week. You had no time for rest, you had no time for vacation. And when they got up to camp up there, they had all the time in the world to themselves, and they could do whatever they want with it. But they couldn't, they couldn't do that when they were...