<Begin Segment 19>

RP: And your parents went out to Seabrook.

RK: Seabrook Farms, Bridgeton, New Jersey.

RP: Yeah.

RK: Great place, too.

RP: Did, did representatives of Seabrook come to Manzanar to recruit people? Do you know?

RK: I don't know. I really don't know. And Seabrook Farms, when I got there, it was just like camp, just like camp.

RP: Like, in what ways?

RK: Huh?

RK: In what way was it like camp?

RK: Oh, because you sort of lived in barracks, too. And then, and the lunch, lunch, especially the lunch part, you, you ate at the factory. So it was sort of like camp. Of course, breakfast and dinner, came home and ate at home. But, yeah, I thought I was in camp again when I visited my folks.

RP: So before... you had graduated just that, that summer, '45?

RK: Yeah, when I graduated I went to, I went to Seabrook.

RP: So you traveled with your mom to Seabrook?

RK: No, she was there already.

RP: Oh, she was there already.

RK: She was there already.

RP: Uh-huh. And your dad, according to the roster it looks like your dad went out first.

RK: First, yeah.

RP: Kind of establish things and then...

RK: Yeah. And then I spent the first summer there, '45, the first summer there. And then from there I went to Cleveland.

RP: Oh, I see.

RK: Because my brother lived in Cleveland. That's where I went to school.

RP: Did you, did you work at Seabrook during that summer?

RK: Yeah. Yes.

RP: What did you do there?

RK: Huh?

RP: What did you do at Seabrook?

RK: You know Birds Eye Frozen Food? Birds Eye? Froze a lot of foods. A lot of peas and corn.

RP: So you operated a machine? Or...

RK: We sort of packed 'em. We sorted of packed. And we were on the labeling machine, too, the canned goods. We were on that. So that's what we did. That sort of was a twenty-four hour shift, too. So you had your day shift and night shift. You work about ten hours, ten hours a shift, I remember.

RP: And did you run across other former internees from other camps who were working there?

RK: Oh yeah, sure. Sure.

RP: There were also other groups of people, like there were refugees from Europe and folks from other parts of the world that came...

RK: Were there?

RP: Yeah.

RK: Well, there were POWs there too. Prisoners of war.

RP: There were POWs there?

RK: Yeah. Uh-huh.

RP: German?

RK: Germans, yeah.

RP: Huh.

RK: They worked there, too.

RP: They actually were working in the factory?

RK: Yeah.

RP: With you?

RK: Yeah, yeah.

RP: Huh.

RK: Yeah. That was pretty fun too because you were sort of near Philadelphia and New York and when you went out, that's where you went. So, you know, so that's how I saw New York. [Laughs]

RP: What did you do in New York?

RK: We just went for the heck, fun of it. Very close.

RP: How long did your parents work at Seabrook?

RK: They worked that whole summer and through the winter and they came back that January or February. So they, they must have worked there about six months. Eight months. About eight months. Then they came back.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.