Densho Digital Archive - Bennie Ouchida Interview (denshovh-obennie-01-0029)

<Begin Segment 29>

SG: You moved back to Oregon in '54?

BO: '54, we came back because Grandma passed away. We had to have the service and put her down.

SG: Was it hard adjusting to life back in Oregon?

BO: Well actually, life in Oregon is, I'm not adjusting to the country now. I have to adjust to the town because she, my wife is a city girl, see, and I have to find a job here in town.

SG: Were you able to find one?

BO: Oh, yeah, if you work cheap enough.

SG: What kind of work did you do?

BO: I did electrical carburation, like the first job I took with like tracing company. They want me because I studied front-end alignment, frame alignment, so they want me to work on that. And then I did the carburetor electrical. I am an ideal person to hire, but I did not take that. And I asked them, "When you have a job in and you know that the other guys can't do it, but if you took this busy guy and put him on it, he'll fix it, right, and finish it." He said he will wait for that guy to do this job, and the other guy just play hooky. I said, "Thank you, good-bye." So my name is "Damn You." That's me. But he himself got canned, and he worked different places and tried to come into my place. "Damn you." I'm "Damn You." I ain't going to argue because I pinpoint him. He wants to get paid to go to school. Me, I went on my own to the east and go to school and then came back, so I'm free. It don't cost them nothing to hire. The other guy, it costs, so he got canned. So [inaudible] all that, they do this or that. Any hard job, they send it to us, our sales person, free one. We had one mechanic that works there. I said, "I want to hire that guy." He's a mouthy guy, and he don't know nothing. So they were, found him and got him to work for us for one year, and I told him this what we do. You do what we, I used to do, so he does that. Every day, lunch time, he walks over there and tells them that they're doing it wrong, and these guys are doing it this way, can't win.

SG: Did you have it, when you came back, did you have a hard time finding, how did people treat you when you first came back to Oregon?

BO: Okay, okay. Everest Brother, veteran. I'm a veteran. I head for veteran place. I ask them, you know. And then on top of that, I had the diploma to hang on the wall. When they leave, I take the diploma off the wall. Oh my god, no. That's the way it went. They get excited I left, but I want to look better place that I can make more money. I went to Harland Trucking Electrical and big stuff, more troubleshoot, more headache.

SG: So you think people treated you well because you were a veteran?

BO: Well, they all, we're different from normal, we're nuts. We're veterans. We could talk to the other guys, like [inaudible], and they like that. We're more flexible and understandable. And then on top of that, I got the diploma hanging on the wall. Where else they could go and see a person have that because they don't pay their way through school. That's the difference. Everybody should go to school.