<Begin Segment 14>

RP: So why did you decide to leave camp?

JO: Well, I don't know. My, like my sister's husband was in Chicago and my older brother was in Chicago and I guess we didn't see any future there. So we got up and... I didn't have the decision to make. They made it. My mom was the one that made the decision. My dad didn't go with us. He wanted to stay. He didn't want to go so he stayed. And my brother right above me was... I don't, he might have been out there picking beets. I don't know but he, anyway, after he finished he went back to Manzanar and then he got drafted. We went to Chicago and was there. My oldest brother got drafted out of, when he was in Chicago too.

RP: So did you, you traveled with your mother to Chicago?

JO: Yeah, well, my mother and my sister and Pat, Patrick. I had to help babysit, I guess. In those days, those trains were something else, too. You'd get all the studs and all the old black smoke and all that. And the trains were something else. Not like today's trains.

RP: Do you remember anything else about the trip to Chicago?

JO: No, just sit there and wait it out. It takes, it was then a couple days.

RP: And when you got to Chicago where did you live?

JO: We lived at Drexel Manor for about a month or something like that. Full of bedbugs, oh boy. Then we moved to, my sister's husband had a place in 55th Street and Kenmore, with, towards Hyde Park and so we moved there. The first, the Drexel Manor we were living we stayed there with my oldest brother. He stayed there. We moved out. And my mother and I had one bedroom. And my sister and her husband, they had the whole kitchen and all that so we just, she did all the cooking and all that other stuff I guess. I worked, I went to Hyde Park High School and then I was working at nights at the HP Smith paper company. I worked swing shift.

RP: What's that?

JO: Swing shift.

RP: Swing shift. What did you do there?

JO: Pardon?

RP: What did you do at the paper company?

JO: Oh, I was help... they'd cut paper... at that time I think on the particular machine that I was behind was they used to have the, wrap the cigarettes and it was a gray type paper and they used to cut it all up and roll it up and then after they cut it up and after somebody feeds and things. And then they roll it off and we would wrap that whole half a dozen or so together up and that's what I was wrapping and put it in the box. So, it was just a manual type labor thing. It's fine.

RP: You grew up in a small community called San Fernando and then you find yourself in Chicago. How did you take to Chicago?

JO: The thing... the worst part I remember is the weather. That weather is something else. In the wintertime it's windy and cold. In the summertime it's hot and humid and never cools off at night. We used to go to the movie house way up on top and sleep 'cause you couldn't sleep at home because all the apartments in Chicago at that time did not have air conditioning. And the fan didn't do a heck of a lot of good. And then in the wintertime, well, they had heat anyway. But it was something else to be outside. I remember going about a hundred feet or so and falling down five times because it was so slippery underneath and you couldn't see it. It was frozen underneath. It'd snow and freeze and stuff and you'd walk across and boom, you're down. So that's the last time I took that shortcut. [Laughs]

RP: So how long were you in Chicago, Jun?

JO: I was there only a year. I left a year later. So, I also worked at a liquor distribution company there and it was something else. 'Cause I was the youngest guy there you know. I was walking and one day the bottle of gin broke and there were two little colored ladies that were doing the packing, they got up and drank that whatever, you know, straight. And I looked at it. So I took a taste of it. How could you taste that? It's awful. Tastes like soap. But that's it. When you're young, I learned. But it's an experience and also went downtown. I used to have to ride the El all the way down into town. And in those days the El was sometimes, was the transportation that I guess they still have it. But it was something else, especially in rush hour. You get in there and boy you get jammed in there. 'Cause everybody's trying to get on, regardless. They used to have them run pretty often too. So while I was in Chicago, I also went to their museum and things so I saw a lot. Navy Pier, which is over there. And the big place where the Chicago play football, Soldier Field. They also had Illinois Central which I used to ride because there was so much traffic. It's a play train and it runs right into downtown. But that's where it ends. Then if you want to go somewhere else you gotta start walkin' and transfer or whatever. Well there's actually no transfer so you had to get off there to the El or the buses or whatever.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.