<Begin Segment 15>

RP: The, how did you get on with this tomato canning job? Did somebody come to recruit you, or...

FH: I don't remember, but word got around that they're hiring so I thought, well, one way to get out of camp. I was so eager to come in, now I'm eager to go out. It was an experience, and a bunch of us girls that we hung around said, "Let's go," so we went. And it was an experience. It was an experience. Utah is a totally different place. Raindrops are like sometimes kids droppin' on your head, they conk on your head, big drops. That was another interesting job.

RP: Tell us about it. What do you remember about it?

FH: It was messy. It was messy.

RP: Where was this cannery?

FH: Roy, Utah.

RP: Near Ogden?

FH: Yeah, very close to Ogden, 'cause they used to haul us into Ogden in a truck, and when it rained they put canvas over us. And we used to moo all the way into camp, into Ogden, 'cause they treat us like cows we're gonna sound like cows. [Laughs] We did a lot of... oh, you know, teenagers. What do you expect? We're trying to make the most of it.

RP: Were there, were there also kids from other camps that were recruited there? Or was it...

FH: There were other, other canneries there that had...

RP: Japanese Americans.

FH: Uh-huh, and we stayed in a camp, it was camp where all the canneries I guess paid into it, and they housed us in the, the showering, bathroom facility and leisure place and...

RP: What were the conditions, your housing conditions relative to Manzanar?

FH: There? They were similar only it was one big barrack like the army camp and it only had bunk beds in it. We all -- I mean, it was all the way down, it was bunk beds and all the way down this way, bunk bed. And one section would be in this end, the next section'd be... whatever cannery that you worked at you mostly stayed in one section. It was like a dormitory, I guess. All girls. There were no guys I don't remember, and if there were they were housed somewhere else.

RP: You went to a common bathroom, too, or did you...

FH: Yeah, it was just like camp. Just like... only you just slept in big barrack instead of family rooms. It was kinda interesting. Met more different people from different camps. I think there was some from Topaz. I'm sure there were others, but I remember Topaz. I became friends with some girls that came from Topaz, which was not too far. It was a job. We did it. We had fun doing whatever we had to do in the leisure time.

RP: How did it feel to be out of camp?

FH: How did it feel to be out of camp? Well, for one thing, you see a lot of things, but you don't realize, at least I didn't realize, that the outside world was going through... you know, some of the supplies weren't all there. Like when we were not in camp, before the camp days, and maybe at that time I just noticed it, but then really appreciate the fact that they weren't getting treated with more luxury stuff than we were. We'd go into stores and there was a lot of things that weren't there that we used to see before the war, and of course you're in a different area, too.

RP: Did you go to movies or take advantage of --

FH: Oh, we just shopped, we... movies, we ate in restaurants. We did everything we could possibly think. We did the most we could with a limited amount of money. Of course, you know, in those days a quarter went a long ways.

RP: Probably you liked to maybe order foods that you couldn't get in camp.

FH: Well, I think you could have bought a hamburger sandwich, blue plate dinner for fifty cents, but what is it now? You can't buy a sandwich for fifty cents. So comparable to the money value then.

RP: So it opened your eyes to the, what was going on in the rest of the world.

FH: Yeah, I think it takes something like that to make you realize that... I mean, we got the freedom now, but in general...

RP: Everybody's making sacrifices.

FH: Yeah, yeah. Sugar wasn't there like it used to be. All the other things in general. And then when I relocated I saw a lot of that. Of course we had a lot of ration stamps that we had to use.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.