<Begin Segment 18>

MN: At Manzanar, you worked on the survey crew.

HF: Yes.

MN: And I understand when you were finished, you were able to sneak out and go fishing.

HF: Yes.

MN: And then you went to Shelley, Idaho, to do some sugar beets?

HF: Yes.

MN: Topping sugar beets?

HF: What?

MN: You topped sugar beets?

HF: Yeah, we thinned sugar beets, we topped sugar beets, and we were there 'til the ground froze, that you couldn't lift the sugar beets anymore. We were there 'til Thanksgiving, then we came back to camp.

MN: What year was this? Was this 1943?

HF: Yeah, '43.

MN: The living conditions at Shelley, Idaho, were they any better than Manzanar?

HF: What do you mean by condition?

MN: Was it like a barrack situation in Shelley, Idaho, also?

HF: Oh, no. We were fortunate that we were able to live in a regular house. Whereas other people that went out there lived in railroad cars. They lived in not a very friendly situation.

MN: I know that working with the sugar beets is very hard work. Tell me about what you have to do to do work with the sugar beets, planting it, thinning it, and topping it.

HF: Well, after you thin it, you wait for it to grow, and then it was time to pull the beets out.

MN: How do you pull them out?

HF: You pull the beets out by the, they have a, I call it a knife with a hook on the end. And you stab the beet with that hook, and you pull it out of the ground.

MN: And you do that all day?

HF: Yeah.

MN: Now, while you were at Shelley, Idaho, did you visit a friend in Ogden, Utah?

HF: I went to visit the friend in Ogden.

MN: Did you get a travel permit to do that?

HF: No.

MN: You were free to go and then come back.

HF: Yeah.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.