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TI: And where did your father go in the United States of America?

KO: Came almost off the boat into Oregon.

TI: Okay, so almost directly to, like, the Portland area, right there?

KO: Right, right.

TI: And so what did he do? When he got off the boat...

KO: Well, actually, I think he was recruited to work for the railroad before he even came to America.

TI: Okay, so right away he's working with the railroad. And any stories about those early years when he was with the railroad? Did he talk about that at all?

KO: I got most of my information from my mother who talks about places like John Day, Oregon, and Vernonia, Oregon. But the company was building trunk lines. Trunk lines are smaller lines connecting the railroad to the main line, the main line from back east to Portland or from Seattle to Portland or from California to Portland, but there were lumber mills which were producing lumber, and they had to be taken to the big market also. So she talks about building the... in fact, the company was called the Oregon Trunk. And they were building small lines from these mills to the main railroad lines where she talks about spending a little bit of time in John Day and in Vernonia.

TI: Okay, so it sounds like these work crews would go to these places, sometimes remote areas, and they'd just connect the lines to the main line, and they would move around. And what was your role? I think you mentioned earlier, at least when you were born, he was a foreman. On these work crews, what was his role? Was it also like a foreman?

KO: Well, no, he started as a track laborer, but had been eventually promoted to foremanship in the Portland yard.

TI: And when he became a foreman, then he became more, I guess, what's the right word? Headquartered, or he didn't travel as much to these other places, or did he still have to move around quite a bit?

KO: No. After, when he was established in Portland as a foreman, it was a stationary kind of a position. And the Portland Yard is the place where all the tracks met at the Portland Union Depot. But all the lines from different places came to that Portland Yard, and where we lived, the center of the yard, there might have been twenty lines of tracks with the boxcar placed right in the center of that, and extended from what would be edge of Japantown, almost two or three miles downstream of the Willamette River.

TI: Oh, that's interesting, because I've been there. So yeah, so Japantown, two or three miles? I mean, it stretched that much in terms of the railroad area?

KO: The railroad yard began just north of Japantown and extends almost all the way to the St. Johns Bridge, that's downstream of the Willamette River.

TI: So that's a huge area.

KO: Yeah. And his position was to maintain these lines of tracks and manage the crew. So he would get his orders from downtown, and then he would pass the orders to his crew and go from, to different sections of the yard to maintain the tracks.

TI: So was your father's English pretty good?

KO: Father's English was quite good. He actually at one time had stayed with the principal of an elementary school as a houseboy. I don't know how that worked, but anyhow, he apparently lived with the principal, learned English, went to night school as well while he worked on the railroad.

TI: So having interviewed quite a few people, I mean, having, I could see where his ability to speak English would be a big benefit in this work environment, and would make him very valuable to the railroads.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.