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KP: The other question I have is when did your parents leave camp and where did they go?

FH: They left camp in June of '45, and I was in Chicago and they were coming through, and somehow or the other they left me know they were coming through and they stopped in Chicago. So I didn't go to work that day, and I went to see them. They got off the train. There was a lay-off time, and I hailed two cabs. There was another family with them, and I remember I hailed two cabs for them and took them to the highlights of different parts of Chicago, the parks, ballparks, the... whatever, the merchandise mart and all that. They went. I don't know what kind of impression they got, but I did that and we ended up, I think at Stermack, where the Chinese restaurant were. And I treated 'em to Chinese dinner. You know, you could treat them... I didn't have much money, didn't make much money, but I treated them to dinner and brought them back to the station, put 'em on the train and sent 'em to New Jersey. They went to New Jersey.

RP: Went to Seabrook?

FH: Yeah, they went to Seabrook.

RP: Did you visit them there?

FH: Yeah, I went three or four times. Yeah, I went three or four times. One time, my girlfriend Ruth was in, living in New York and she came to visit and we had to meet together. We ended up going to New York and seeing New York and then came back and...

RP: What were your impressions of Seabrook?

FH: Another camp. [Laughs] Another camp. They lived in one room, shared a bathroom, and it was... that type of living, it was, it's just another type of camp, only they had the freedom to go to town or... you know, they weren't confined.

RP: So, sort of what Kirk mentioned earlier about you went into Manzanar thinking about it being a camping trip, an adventure, but you experience some very difficult events, like the "riot" and the "loyalty questionnaire," and how did you see that experience when you left, or how did you see the camp when you left?

FH: I left camp earlier -- I say "earlier" -- I went to Pasadena. I, my parents, when the war broke out, I don't know where, how, when, but they got the word that if you had a bank account and you were an alien they were gonna freeze your money and you couldn't, you wouldn't be able to touch it. So they had changed my name, their bank account into my name, because I was a citizen. I was a minor, but I was a citizen. When I was leaving camp, planning to leave camp, Mom said, "You know, that's our family saving that is in your name. You can't take it with you, so you have to go have it changed." So I got on the bus, one of those bus that go to L.A., Bishop -- no, Reno to L.A. I think that's the bus, Reno to L.A. And I got one, on one of those bus and stayed at the hostel in Pasadena. And I think a bunch of us went, five or six of us went. Anyhow, not for the same reason, but I had gone because I went to Glendale, near Glendale -- it was at Waterbank -- changed my name to my -- I didn't have to have my birth certificate, no license, no ID, no nothing. I want my name changed to this name. That's what they did. You didn't have to have any kind of identification... and changed the name and the bank would change to my sister's name because she was gonna be with them. And I took it and went back to Manzanar and gave it to my mother. And then, oh, that was in the fall of '44, I guess. It was either the fall of '44 or winter of '44, sometime in there. And then I came back and then I left in March of '45, and that's when I left camp. Does that answer your question?

KP: And did your parents stay on the East Coast, or did they come back to California?

FH: Oh, they came back when I came to San Diego... okay, now this goes back. It's going around in circles again. So when I came to San Diego, this fellow Muto got a hold of me. Not the father, but the son, George, got hold of me. He says, "I'm working for Robert Hall," here in Encinitas, or he was part of a three, three man corporation thing, and he was, he was a know-it-all guy that ran the carnation field. And he said, "I've got nothing but 'wetbacks' working here for me. I want somebody that knows the, the rope, so do you think your mom and dad would be interested to come over here and work for me and teach these people the real thing, because I can't be on hand with 'em all the time." So I called, or I wrote to my mom -- calling was not the thing then -- so I wrote to them and then they wanted to come. So in '50 my mother-in-law passed away on the tenth of July and they came four days later, three days later, and they came to Encinitas to work for Robert Hall and George Muto. So that's going around in circles again.

RP: Started with the Mutos.

FH: Yeah, and so he worked for Hall with Muto, and he worked, they worked for him for, oh, several years, and then they decided... oh, and then the partnership, the three thing, broke up. There was a T.B. Young, Hall, and Muto were the threesome, and they broke up. Hall went on his own. T.B. Young said he's out of it. He's not going into business. So George Muto went into San Diego and went into wholesale business. So then my mother and father started their own business in Locadia, at growing. And then later on they bought the piece of property off of Lake Drive over here for less than five thousand dollars. Two and a half acres, which is now probably, that size piece of property'd be a million dollars or better.

RP: They were growing flowers there?

FH: And they grew flowers on their own and they grew flowers for George Muto. Yeah, so he was the, in the wholesale business.

RP: So they returned to their roots, the flower business. They stayed at it 'til they retired.

FH: Yeah. And they quit in '73, '72, and I quit in '73. And I came up and grew flowers down, right down here, where it's just right adjacent to I-5. And I had four, four acres there. We sold it and we retired, but two years later I went to work again.

RP: What do you do now?

FH: I work for the school district, Encinitas high school district as a aide with special needs children. Adults, I mean, teenagers. Young adults. And some of 'em are college age. And I love it. I love it. It's very rewarding. And incidentally, I did work for Hall, too, so it's been going around and around. I did shipping. I worked fourteen years for Robert Hall and Fred Westin in the flower shipping business. And we shipped all over United States and Canada. I've had a lot of, lot of fun doing lot of good things.

RP: What was it about being around flowers for you?

FH: I guess it's a happy thing. Makes people happy, right? Says a lot of things without saying it. When you give flowers, I think the occasion, whatever the occasion is, it says a lot without words. I guess it's a good thing. Flowers are a good thing, and I've always been around flowers, except that one time I was, it was fishes. [Laughs]

KP: They're not interchangeable? Fish and flowers, if you give somebody a fish it's not the same as...

FH: Well, you could eat one, but you can't eat the other. [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.