<Begin Segment 28>

RP: So what was, what was resettlement like for you in Chicago, trying to get back...

IK: Well, that was kind of a shock, and I got off the train and it was winter. It's January, I think, if I'm not mistaken, 'cause I was shuddering, just shivering all the way into the train station, with my light little American -- excuse me, the California overcoat, was a raincoat. And I'm thinking, "What am I," it was dark, dark, glum, overcast snow day, and I'm wondering, "Why am I out here?" 'Cause after all of that crying all this way, maybe she's right. Then the train, I get used to the Chicago loop on the rail, the streetcar. I got on it near the end of the line, and I fell asleep before we got into town and fell, stayed asleep all the way around the loop and back on out. I woke up at the other end of the line again, so I figured, "Well, I may as well go back and sleep." The hours were wrong, too. Different, with the change of time. So that was quite a change. That city was a big city compared to Los Angeles. I didn't have that much money in my pocket for much of anything, so it was quite a lost place.

RP: Were you able to acquire that, that YMCA job?

IK: No, I wasn't smart. I didn't even remember that, so I bumped across friend from Manzanar, and he says, "Why don't you come stay with us?" And since I was at the YMCA, paying three and a half dollars a day or somethin' like that, I wasn't gonna last long. So as Tommy was old friend from camp, says, "Come live with us," and it was a place that the religious... I'm awful with names. A Caucasian, Philadelphian...

KP: Quaker.

IK: Quaker, that's it. He had this sort of a hostel with a bunch of other guys from camp, and he was saying go out and get jobs and so on, from there. So I stayed there a couple of days and worked, went for a job that was hiring. They found Japanese evidently educated and were hiring Japanese. Anyway, in the interview, I start with grammar school. "Yes." Junior high, "yes." High school, "yes," and now they're being suspicious. "Anywhere else?" I said, "College." "Where?" And so they wrote that out very slowly. "Anything else?" I said, "Yes." I said, "Art school." By then he's just totally, just out of, he was out of his... he did not admit to anything. Anyway, that stopped filling out the, the form, and I met the, I got hired to work in the book... it was a, what was it? It was a, they sold everything. They were a warehouse. Anyway, the, they had different departments, and I ended up in the book department. I guess they figured I could read. My immediate boss, I think she graduated junior high school or somethin' like that, and the boss, I -- oh no, she didn't graduate high school, but the boss did -- so I had more education than the boss boss, because I guess I could read. And that was so very boring and uninteresting that I'd fall asleep in the bins between orders. And what got to me most was the time clock you had to punch. I never heard of one and, and there was one that you had to punch it for every little movement, and I just walked out. I couldn't take that.

So I finally got a job at the hospital. I can't remember that name, either. I can't remember anything about the hospital, but the, we had wash out the instruments for oil... everybody was getting gas -- not gas -- blood, blood to make serum for the army, the... just, all for blood. Anyway, they wanted to make a, gave me a book to become a doctor, things like that. And I thought, "Gee, I'm gonna do what I want to do," so I finally started looking for a job in art, and I had no, didn't know how to do it or anything. I was just, looked in the telephone book and started at the studios. Started at A, like the smart guy. I went all through the As and then went through the Bs, and I finally got to the Ss and a guy, they offered an apprentice job, which I jumped at. And although they expected my family to pay my salary. I said, "Well, I can't do that. I need, rent to pay and food to buy." And so they did a big offer and gave me twenty dollars a day -- or not a day, a week. But my rent cost nine dollars, so the rest was... let's see, I think streetcars were about ten cents or so, so I was running out of money real, real fast. I didn't eat much, but the job was around very famous people that were all experts in the country, or they were tops in that country. Their reputations were so... I got a big education just watching them paint.

RP: These were commercial artists?

IK: Yes.

RP: Doing advertising work, or...

IK: Yes. These guys, most of them were illustrators that did a lot of billboards for Coke and stuff like that, so I was very fortunate. And then I got drafted.

RP: Did the training and the learning that you got there, that inspire you to go into a graphic arts field?

IK: Well, I was an, I was a pure apprentice. I didn't know a damn thing, and they were all very friendly, very helpful to me. They didn't know what Japanese was, and also they were very open-minded people. And these were famous people that were, I was hobnobbing with.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.