<Begin Segment 11>

LT: So can you talk more specifically about how you did spend your time on the farm and with your family trying to readjust now that you were home?

SI: Well, I got a little, I didn't stay too much, 'cause brother was home, and he was farming, so I took off a year or two and went to Hawaii, went to University of Oregon for a while and stuff like that. So I didn't, for a few years I was just roaming around. [Laughs]

LT: But you eventually decided to return to Hood River?

SI: Oh, yeah.

LT: In Dee?

SI: Uh-huh.

LT: So what did you do to reestablish yourself in your hometown community? There had been a lot of prejudice. What did you do to dispel that?

SI: Yeah, like Dee mill, they had work, so I used to work down there for a while, then try to find work. In the co-op, there was a lot of, there was Apple Growers Association, anyway, they... I got in to do some work for them furnishing our own equipment or driving, or try to get a little part-time work, eventually got to where you can, you can work, since Hood River still had a cannery going, well, there was a lot of work canning pears day and night. So we just got in doing some work that needed to be done, nighttime or something, and farmed during the day.

LT: So how many hours a day were you working?

SI: [Laughs] We were young yet, so sometimes we worked quite a few hours.

LT: I guess so. So you were establishing yourself by working really hard. Do you think Nikkei in Hood River became more Japanese or less Japanese after the war?

SI: No, it's less, because we were working for other people, not Japanese, you know. So we were working for, like Apple Growers, and got to know a lot of those people eventually, like eventually by 1980, I got to be a regular over the road truck driver. And I took a responsibility of driving the truck and delivering canned goods or fresh fruit to Seattle or down to Medford or Eugene. So they let me use what equipment they had, so I was doing pretty good job and moving merchandise for, especially when they had cannery, well, they had juices and ciders, vinegars. I could remember even one time I delivered, Diamond was juicing New Towns and Red Delicious. And then when the juice, apple juice was made into concentrate in a fifty gallon barrel, I've taking a whole load in a forty-foot van, whole load of concentrated apple juice clear up to Aberdeen, Washington, where they made cranapple juice with their cranberry, things like that. So we had quite a responsible job using the equipment. Then when I started working for Diamond pretty steadily, well, usually if there was a night work, well, I'd take a night work and do a little farming in the daytime. But then that way I kept working, and eventually I got to be a full-time worker for the last, at least the last five years before retirement, I was a full-time worker. So I got to... so they had a union, teamster union, and lot of the growers said, "We don't need to join the union, you're a grower." I said, "Well, I don't know. I think there's some good benefits the teamster had." So I joined the teamster union, and some of the guys said, oh, they didn't like the idea that I was a teamster. [Laughs] But eventually I worked full time for quite a few years, so I got a good pension out of it.

LT: You seem to have had your hand in many pots. And then you met your wife. Can you talk about that, when you met and when you married?

SI: Oh, I used to, we used to, family used to visit Dalles, Toda family, and in that process, we got to know each other, so that's where we got together. Yeah, it's... she was... well, during the war, she and her sister, her twin sister, went to Clinton, Iowa, I guess, to be in, study nursing. So when she got (home) after the war, she was RN. So she was working at Dalles or somewhere as RN. That's how, when I visited her, Dallesport, well, that's when we got acquainted. Then after we got married, well, she did some nursing work for hospitals or private nursing or across the river or somewhere. I think when I first met her, she was working at the Dalles hospital.

LT: And to backtrack just a little bit, Mary, your wife, and your family, were at Minidoka during the war. What did you learn about Minidoka from them?

SI: Well, I didn't know too much what they did, 'cause I don't even remember visiting at Minidoka. But while I was away, well, Brother Hit said he went into Minidoka, but family found a job available if they work out, so they went to Walla Walla and Twin Falls, and they didn't stay in a camp if there was work, so they went out to work. And I guess Brother Hit said he worked at the big apple orchard farm in Twin Falls or somewhere. Then he said he went up to Walla Walla to work at the farm that raised those green onions, or onion seed, they were farming and raising seeds for the onions and places like that. So they tried to find a work, they didn't stay in a camp if they could help it.

LT: Sounds like work is a theme through everything here.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.