<Begin Segment 17>

AC: So at that time, Abe was the person who was, he was basically the farmer when your father wasn't doing well, health, and he basically took over farming? Get up at like four in the morning.

PS: Yeah, well, he was a hard worker. He used to do that as a kid over there when we were still on the Clackamas River. Well, maybe just starting high school, but somewhere along the line he just got to doing those kinds of things. Middle child, I don't know if it was middle child syndrome or what, but he got a reputation for his hard work, and I guess he liked that and that's what he did. He was a hard worker. Didn't matter, later, when we were farming over here, and I had to haul all the onions that we raised, we hauled them ourselves, and he got a reputation for being the hardest, one of the hardest working guys around. And so he was a hard worker. Joe and I both got our hard work licks in for that period of time.

AC: They said that all these evacuees started coming in to this area, and they were coming in from Minidoka to go to work. You said problems began to appear about when these people showed up. What kinds of problems?

PS: Oh, not anything big, I guess, because it was kind of hard, I think, for a lot of these people, businesses and so forth, to see these, influx of workers come in like that, Orientals. And, of course, they'd go to the bar, the young guys would go to bars and make a lot of noise. Basically I think there really wasn't that much trouble. I can't really put my finger on anything. Of course, I'm sure there were some disturbances, but nobody made a big to-do about it, I guess. There were guys getting, drinking and getting awfully loud and that kind of thing, that was the times. Of course, for the people who owned them, allowances, why, of course, that meant there was a lot of money brought in. I think everybody just kind of put up with it in spite of everything. I really, I don't... can't remember if any real... oh, there were some incidents, but I can't remember them now, it's been too long ago.

AC: You said a lot of these city kids would come in and they'd want to work on the farm just to get out of the camps and things like that, they'd do all kinds of things. What kind of stuff did the city kids do?

PS: Well, the kids, the young guys we had on our farm, the kids that grew up in the city, like in Seattle, they had no concept of farming. So it was a new experience to 'em, and just had to lead 'em by hand through the different jobs. And this one fellow, I know he grew up on a farm around Kent, I think, and so it was, he took to it pretty well. But he was a little older, too. Some of these younger guys, it was new to 'em. But they were willing, they were willing to learn, and so it was a good experience. Since they grew up in the city and the things they didn't know, it was a little bit, things that we had to teach them were a little bit, made you kind of wonder if they haven't learned any kinds of lessons at all. [Laughs]

AC: What kinds of things did you have to teach them?

PS: Oh, like irrigating, gravity irrigation, that was a new thing for them. You got water going down a ditch, and then you have to cut a little slit in the ditch that would get the water to go down the row. And you had to show 'em how to do that kind of thing so it wouldn't all end up going down one row, the whole canal, ditch, water going down one row. You had to show 'em how to spread the water out so you can cover, utilize the water, irrigation water as efficiently as you can, and make it, once you got the water turned out of the bank, you've got to let it, put it on the [inaudible] and make it go where you want it to. And then after it gets through, you've got to know what to do with the wastewater, and those kinds of things. They did weeding onions, not to step all over the plants, and be careful about, not to cut out the plants, the onions, and pull out the weeds without pulling out the crop, crop that you want to want to, sugar beets, trying to teach them how to thin beets. That was an experience, and also harvesting sugar beets, not to throw 'em so hard, to throw 'em over the other side and hit somebody on the head, that kind of thing. That was a new experience for a lot of people. And at the same time, for sugar beets, you had a knife and you'd cut off the tops, and, of course, there was lots of cut arms, not arms, but hands and legs, little nicks that people got, people wouldn't top off very well and the knife would glance off and hit your leg or something. But that's the way it was. That was the thing that people had to learn to be careful of. And playing Annie-over with those big beets, too, that was a no-no. You had to just throw them onto the truck without getting too carried away. That was some of the things that... it was a new experience to people from out of the area. A lot of little things like that. But everybody learned pretty darn fast. It's a new experience for them and so you had to just bring 'em along and they caught on real fast. Some funny things have happened down through the, trying to teach them.

AC: Say you had these people who were forced to evacuate, and you didn't. And Roosevelt had signed this order, and how did you feel about all that?

PS: Oh, what could you do? The old expression, "shikata ga nai," that's the Japanese expression. Well, not a whole lot you could do about it. So that's... people just put up with it. It wasn't right in our way of thinking, but there was no way you could combat that kind of a government order. Of course, there were some people in the camps, some guys that wouldn't, didn't like it, and they raised some hell about it. But the people who, most everybody just kind of accepted it. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, kind of thing. So that's, everybody had to get out, try to get out and make a living, and get on with life. I think most of the farmers around here were glad to have the help, and I think most of the people who came out to work were treated pretty good by the farmers. Of course, everybody depended on, depended on a lot on the workers at that time, because the workers were hard to find during wartime, and they were glad to have that kind of help. I don't... it's kind of amazing because years later, you'll meet somebody and says, "Oh, yeah, I was in your area back during wartime, and worked up in places you never even thought of." There used to be an orchard up north of here, probably forty, fifty miles north of here on Highway 95, there was an orchard up there, ranch up there, there were quite a bit of orchards, and people talked about they worked up there, and hardly knew that kind of place existed back in those days. But it's interesting, you come across people who say, "Yeah, I worked in your area, I was in your area for a couple of years." And I think in our church, so many people went through our Methodist church back in those days. I look back at some of the names, so many of the names were people from out of the area, and were evacuees, and they added a great deal, contributed a great deal to our church. By the same token, our church was, helped a lot of people.

AC: Did you ever, consider, you know, "Hey, but for the grace of God, there go I"? You could have been, easily been in their shoes?

PS: Yeah. Like my wife's oldest sister, she was recently married at the time the war broke out, and I think... well, she'll probably mention that later, but she got a child, and, of course, it was the first grandchild for the parents, and I think it was after the war broke out, but the father-in-law wanted to get her out of, get her over here in the worst way. And I think it came about that she was, and her husband were able to get over here. It was a pretty traumatic thing for the parents at that time. Well, I guess we're just lucky that we were here and didn't have to go through that experience. I have had time trying to imagine going through that scenario, but fortunately, we didn't have to.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.