<Begin Segment 13>

RP: And so you, you worked at this base for the rest of the war?

TI: Yeah. Although towards the end of the war, I got sick and I was in the hospital for about two weeks. And that's when the word came that the war ended. But while I was in the hospital there, I got my... the government sent me my 1-A card, so I was supposed to go in for my medical. But I was in the hospital at that time, so I didn't have to go in the army after all. I was in the hospital because I was breathing too much carbon dioxide from fire extinguishers. And they put me in... they didn't know what was wrong with me. I turned, I got yellow jaundice, I turned all yellow, and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. So there I was in the hospital all that time while they were working on me, trying to find out what was wrong. They never knew.

RP: This was a Reno hospital?

TI: Reno hospital.

KP: This was from your work, you were breathing the carbon dioxide?

TI: Yeah. I had a guy behind me -- oh, that's another thing. Besides working on doing mechanical work, one day I was welding something in another shop, and a big shot there came in and looked and says, "Hey, what are you doing in here?" "Well, I'm welding." "You know how to weld?" and I said, "Yeah." Said, "We didn't know that," so they changed me into welding on airplanes. So then I started welding on planes, and they had a guy behind me with a fire extinguisher. And every time something would catch on fire, he'd give me a blast and I'd catch it across the face. And that's what made me sick. So after breathing that about a month, they put me in the hospital.

RP: How long were you in the hospital for?

TI: Two weeks.

RP: Two weeks. And then you went back to work?

TI: No, war ended.

RP: That was it.

TI: So I couldn't get my job back, that was it. So I made up my mind when the war ended and we were allowed to come to west L.A. again, why, that's where we started working on it, making the move to come back here. So we had to come back, but we had to place to come back to. So... except up to the Buddhist church up here. So I stayed in the chicken pen up there for a while, and I mean a real chicken pen. Used to be a chicken pen behind the next-door house to the church. And they converted that into a living quarters.

RP: How many other families were there, too?

TI: Two others. So in the meantime, I made an appointment to try to buy this house from the owner, who was Japanese. But he was back east, and he'd made up his mind he wasn't going to return here. So we made a deal with him and made a deal to buy the house from him. So we got it for (seven thousand), which was pretty cheap. Well, I mean, at that time, that was a lot of money, like a million dollars to me. But I managed to get the money together and we put a down payment on it. And, oh, I know what it was. I had an airplane that... when I was working out there at the airport, I had the chance to buy a Piper Cub from somebody. And when the war ended, I sold it and put that money as a down payment on this house. That's right, that's how I got it. So that ended my flying for a while.

RP: Yeah, did you, did you ever own another plane again?

TI: No, I came back here, and I was so busy trying to get work to make a living, I couldn't fly anymore. So that ended my flying.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.