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RP: How long had your father worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad before the, the firing occurred?

FS: He went to work about 1922, so he was probably working about twenty, twenty-two years with the railroad when he was fired.

RP: Can you describe the relationship between, that developed between him and his bosses? I guess he, like most Issei guys, started out as a section hand, or did he step right into a more skilled position?

FS: He worked as a apprentice for a machinist, and then he eventually became a machinist for the railroad. So he worked in the machine shop making parts for the train and repairing the trains, and this is the same thing my uncle did.

RP: How were they treated by, by the company for those twenty years?

FS: They were, there was a very good employer. They did not discriminate. When my father was fired and we were going for reparations, I contacted the railroad company in San Francisco and they told me it was not a railroad firing because they did not discriminate against their workers. This letter was not accepted by ORA, Office of Redress Administration, because it was fifty years after the fact, and they wanted some kind of a note or papers indicating that he was fired, before they would accept us for reparations. Whereas there was no such thing because the FBI was very careful not to leave a paper trail. And it was only because of Andy Russell, who had gone to the museum in Ely, Nevada, railroad museum, and found these papers, so we were able to get reparations. I went back, amazingly, to the Ely Railroad Museum to look for these papers myself, and they couldn't find them. So Andy really did us a favor by having found those papers. And then I understand that the president of the railroad company had read about us in the papers, and how I found these papers. And he was going to do a book, and he couldn't find the papers in the museum either, so they contacted Andy Russell to get his copies. So we were very fortunate that Andy had found these in the museum.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.