Oral History Program Raymond Uno Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 14 August 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Raymond Uno Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 14 August 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Uno, Raymond, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 14 August 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Raymond Uno August 14, 2014 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Raymond Uno, conducted by Sarah Langsdon on August 14, 2014. Raymond Uno is a first generation Japanese American who was born in Ogden, but moved to California in 1939 with his family. He later spent time in an internment camp in Wyoming with his family. He talks about coming back to Ogden and growing up on 25th Street and in the Japanese community. Also present is Wat Misaka. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I’m here interviewing Raymond Uno. It is August 14th, 2014 and we’re at the Waterstradt Room in Special Collections. So Ray, why don’t you go ahead and we’ll start with where and when you were born. RU: I was born December 4, 1930. And I was born in a taxicab. SL: In a taxicab? RU: Right. And it was a yellow cab; the driver’s name was Raymond Harris. WM: Oh, that’s how you got your name. SL: Your mom couldn’t make it up to the Dee Hospital? RU: And my mother always told me that there was an article in the Standard- Examiner regarding this incident and I thought about looking it up but never did, and I ran for judgeship and was interviewed and the reporter’s name was Jan Thompson for the Deseret News and I mentioned that to her and one day she came to my office and said, “Here,” and she showed me the article in the Standard-Examiner and said she came to Ogden to Standard-Examiner and asked them if they had any copies of the newspaper of that time and they said, “No, we don’t keep any copies, but you can go the Ogden City Library and they 2 should have it.” So she came to the Ogden City Library, looked on the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th and didn’t find anything and so she was almost going to give up, she says well, she’ll try one more day. On day eight sure enough right on the front page it says: “Stork Beats the Taxicab.” SL: Did you have any siblings? RU: Well my oldest brother was Wallace Ichiro Uno and my sister was Yuki Alma Uno and they’re both older than I am. My brother is about three years older and my sister is about two years older. SL: So where did you live in Ogden? RU: My recollection is, the first place that I remember was on 23rd Street between Kiesel and Grant and it was close to where Shinji Ichida lived. We lived in front of a pickle factory and I remember there was a Chinese family called Louie. They don’t remember me living there but I remember all of the Louies because Mack Louie was a classmate of mine and Mary Louie was a year younger and then I got to know the oldest Louie, Will Louie, who became a very prominent architect in Salt Lake City. SL: What did your family, your parents, do for a living? RU: My father came to Salt Lake around 1921-22. WM: Ogden. RU: I mean to Ogden at 1921 or ’22 and he came because my mother’s aunt lived here and her husband was named Utaro Kariya, and he was a very successful merchant, and at that time he was running, I guess—I was kind of looking at the papers, I wasn’t sure—but there was a Japanese business called Kimono House 3 and that was located on 24th Street and Grant Avenue, but later on, Safeway took over that location. But at that time he had a business called Ban Kariya and had stores in Utah and Idaho and possibly in Washington, I’m not sure. But at that time he needed to have an accountant or bookkeeper and so he was doing business with an uncle of mine called Domoto, and Domoto was a very successful businessman, and he had the largest import/export company on the west coast. He did business I guess in various parts of the west and he established contacts with the businesses here in Ogden. I was looking at the newspaper and it had Domoto and it was sort of a trading company and I think initially he was helping a lot of Japanese businesses, but my uncle Utaro Kariya did business with him and he asked him if he had someone that he knew that might be able to do some bookkeeping. So he mentioned my father who had been working with him and my aunt had married Domoto and she was responsible for bringing quite a few of the Uno clan to the United States. I guess my father must have come before the World War I because he volunteered for the Service and served oversees in Europe and when he came back he worked for my uncle and he came to Utah and around 1922 or ’23. My mother, who was a school teacher in Japan, she graduated out of Nihon Joshi Dai, which is the oldest and largest private Japanese Women’s University in Japan, and she was intending on going to Columbia University to do some graduate work because she was told that if she went to school in the United States and returned to Japan she could possibly be a teacher at Japan Women’s University. So she was just passing through Ogden and my father 4 happened to be here in Ogden at the same time. I guess both being single it turned out that they got together and got married and as a result my sister, my brother, myself, were born in 1926 and ’29 and ’30. SL: Did your mom teach when she was here? RU: She essentially was a housewife but she did do some teaching in Layton with my father. And some of the people remember her; I guess they’re about Wat’s age, but remember taking Japanese lessons in Layton when my mother and my father was teaching there. But basically she was a housewife. SL: Where did you end up going to school? RU: Same school as Wat; I went to Grant school, and we lived on 23rd Street, which is just a block away from Grant’s school. WM: Half a block. RU: Half a block. I Went to Central High School and then to Ogden High School, but my attendance was not continuous like these people. I moved to California in 1939, my family did, and you know I went to California and went to a place called El Monte, which had a segregated school, Lexington, which consisted primarily of Mexicans and partly a few Asian families. Then in 1941, of course, that’s when Pearl Harbor was attacked and Executive Order 9066 said that all people of Japanese ancestry would be evacuated from certain strategic areas on the west coast. So I was put into an assembly center in Pomona, California, and stayed there for about three months. I remember a couple of the teachers from Lexington coming to visit us and there were barbed-wire fences all around. We lived in barracks. 5 From there we went to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, by train—troop train. I remember the troop train, they had blinds closed and guards and when we would stop, we would be able to go off on the platform there. I don’t remember exactly what the route was, but if I remember correctly it was from Los Angeles; went through Arizona, Texas, to Colorado, and into Wyoming. I was there from 1942 to 1945. My father passed away January 21, 1943, seven months after we reached Heart Mountain. From there our family were given twenty-five dollars each and a train ticket and we were told we could go anywhere we want to go. My mother had an aunt here, still in Ogden, so we returned to Ogden. I went to Central and then I went to Ogden High, and when I went to Ogden High I tried to join the service when I was sixteen and they found out my age and so they said no. I had enough credits to get my diploma, I guess, and they said why don’t I wait until I was seventeen. When I turned seventeen I immediately joined the Service, and Kay Yei, George Nakashige, Oscar Misaka and Shinji Ichida all followed, they all came in later. I was assigned to the military language school. WM: St. Paul. RU: St. Paul, Minnesota. They had moved to Monterey, California, and it was at the Presidio of Monterey and although I didn’t know any Japanese, I heard they taught Japanese and applied for the language school. For some reason they accepted me and I had the hardest time in the world trying to learn Japanese, but I’ve been thankful for the fact that they sent me to their language school for a year and I learned Japanese and from there I was sent overseas and I spent 6 almost three years in Japan and that was during the Korean War. While I was in Japan, I was attached to the 319 military intelligence unit and that was a unit that had most of the linguists. The 441st counter-intelligence corps needed to have linguists to do some interpreting and translating so I was attached to the 441st counter-intelligence corps in Japan. I spent most of my time interrogating Japanese prisoners of war that was shipped back from Russia. When the Korean War started, it was June 25th 1950, and I was supposed to be discharged within a couple of months and I heard nothing and I finally found out that I had an involuntary extension. So I spent an extra year in Japan and that’s how I became a Korean War vet and returned to the United States; came back to Utah and came to Weber College. Now I don’t know why I was going to college, it’s like language school, I didn’t know anything about what I was doing. Everybody says, “You ought to go to college,” and I found out that they had the Korean G.I. Bill. So a classmate of mine from Ogden High that joined the Service same time I did, George Nakashike, we both came to apply for school at Weber Jr. College and we found out we were the first Korean War veterans to use the G.I. Bill, so we got our picture in the paper: first Korean War vets to attend Weber Jr. College. I came to Weber Jr. College and a friend of mine named Jack Andrews, I played football with him at Ogden High School, he said, “Well, come on and play football with us,” and I said, “Gee, I’m four years behind everybody. I don’t want to play football.” But he encouraged me, and the football coach’s name was Mecham at the time I think. I went to spring practice and played three games and 7 after three games I decided that football is not for me. I was only 135 lbs., trying to play with all these big guys and I got knocked around too much. So I concentrated on my schooling; went to summer school and took twenty-three hours of credit—quarter credit hours—and finished Weber in a year and I got my military credit for gymnasium, so that my military service took care of my class credits for gym and so with that and taking a lot of credit hours I was able to finish Weber Jr. College in a year and transferred to the University of Utah. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but I wanted to work for government, so they said take political science so I went and took political science. One of the things I did was I worked for the Post Office all the time that I was going through school and one of the professors at the time was Jennings Olson, he was a philosophy professor, and you may remember, he’s well known at Weber State. But anyway, he also worked for the Post Office at the Union Pacific Station. I worked with him at the Post Office and then every winter I worked at the Post Office while I was in Salt Lake and delivered mail almost all over Salt Lake and graduated with a degree in political science. People said, “You know, if you want to work for government you should get a law degree.” And I’m thinking, “What’s a law degree?” I applied for law school at the University of Utah, and fortunately they didn’t have the LSAT examination and fortunately they didn’t have a law school entrance exam because I probably would never have passed it. I was able to get into a law school and graduated with LLB, it’s called a Juris Doctorate now. 8 After graduating law school, I didn’t know what to do, so the first year I didn’t take my bar exam and I just wanted to work for government. My law professor Sanford Kadish, said, “Gee, you went to school for three years, suffered and had to go through the turmoil of going through law school; you should take your bar exam.” So, I studied up, took my bar exam and fortunately passed my bar exam. After passing the bar exam, I was still uncertain of what am I going to do. I still wanted to work for the government. I kind of looked around and I was finishing my schooling and I applied for a teaching job and I had gone back and got my teaching certificate, secondary teaching certificate. So I looked around for a job and they said, “You know there’s nothing on political science that we teach in high schools,” so I went back to school, majoring in English, and in between I applied for some jobs, and I got a job at Salt Lake County Welfare Department and became a case worker. I found out that they had stipends for getting a master’s in social work. I said, “Well, I guess I’ll apply for the stipend,” and I got my stipend where you have to work six months and six months you go to school. So, I worked part of the time as a probation officer for the juvenile court for the first year and the second year I worked part of the time with Family Service Society in Salt Lake City. I got my master’s degree in social work, and still didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I found out it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and as I was going to school I met Judge John Farr Larson, whose name is very famous in Ogden: the Larsons and the Farrs. He said, “Stick around. I think I can get you a job.” So I stuck around and he got me a job as a referee in the juvenile court in 9 Salt Lake. Because I went to school on a stipend, I had to pay back eighteen months to the State to pay for my schooling, so I stayed with the juvenile court for eighteen months as a referee. After I finished the eighteen months I decided well I’m going to do something else, and someone says, “Well, maybe you ought to try to get a job at the Salt Lake County Attorney’s Office.” So, not really wanting to practice law, but I needed to have a job, I applied and I found out that I had to go through the political process and they said you had to get your okay from the chair of legislative district and it was a Democratic district. So the Democratic Party Legislative Chair, Maudie Kimball, asked me a lot of questions and I said, “Ma’am, I’m really not that familiar with the Democrats, I vote Democratic but that’s about it.” She wasn’t too happy, but she says, “Well, I give you an okay.” So she approved me to work at the County Attorney’s Office. The County Attorney was Grover Giles who’s a legend in the Democratic Party. He hired me for some reason, I have no idea. I worked as a deputy county attorney and a job opening came up in the Attorney General’s Office and I had no contacts with the Attorney General’s Office and I thought, “Well I’ll just make an application.” I applied for the job and it happened to be another famous Democrat, Attorney General Phil Hansen, who was the number one criminal attorney and became the number one prosecutor by chance, just like me. So I worked for him for four years and then went into private practice for about seven years. Then, you should interrupt me, because I’m just going on, whatever I remember. You want to know about Weber College. SL: No, you were fine. So, when did you meet your wife, Yo? 10 RU: 19--, let’s see…it’s going to be fifty years in two years, so 1965. SL: In Salt Lake? RU: In Salt Lake. Yes. SL: So do you ever come back to Ogden? RU: I’ve been coming back regularly. My mother still lived in Ogden and she retired in 1965. Up until then I used to come up every weekend to visit with my mother and help her out. When she retired she came to Salt Lake to live with me and she lived with me for thirty-six years after she retired. She lived to 101 ½, but she lived at, I don’t know if you remember Esther Hall, but Esther Hall was a Methodist women’s home, single women would live there and it was kitty-corner from Weber College. It was on Adams and 25th and Weber College was on Adams and 25th, kitty-corner. So when I went to Weber College, I would walk across the street and come back again. But anyway, she worked for Esther Hall and although she was a schoolteacher and had college education that was the only job that she was able to get, so she worked there until she retired when she was 65. SL: So, what was Heart Mountain like? RU: Heart Mountain as you know, we were still young. When I was in there, I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, we were in for four years, so we didn’t really experience the impact that the older people did, like my father. He passed away when he was 48 years old, but he was never able to accomplish the things that he wanted to do if he were out. Then like the older people, a lot of them lost their businesses, they lost their farms, they lost their homes, they lost almost all their 11 property. They either had to sell it or give it away when we left. The only thing we could take with us when we went into the camp was what we could carry in our hands, what we wore. So when we went into the camp the first year—that was 1942, the winter of ’42—was the coldest winter in Wyoming almost. The wind-chill was down to thirty or forty degrees. We’re from California and California clothing is what we wore. It was so cold and the only thing that heated us was a small potbelly stove that we had. The barracks were like military Army barracks with tarpaper and inside was celitex with no insulation, so it got pretty cold. In the wintertime, it was just freezing cold and in the summer time it was just really hot because Heart Mountain is between Cody and Powell, Wyoming. It’s right out there with nothing but sagebrush and desert and right next to the Shoshoni River. That first year was really tough for everybody to get acclimated to the climate and to get acclimated to the living quarters because our house, or our room that we had in the barrack, was the size of this room right here, it’s almost exact same size. There were five of us, and we had our beds and we had no furniture but we were eventually able to make some and then we got partitions. If you wanted to go to the restroom, you had to go out and go to a public facility and if we had to do any washing you had to go to the laundry room, if you wanted to take a shower or a bath, you had to go there. So, every day we had to trek back and forth in the morning and evening. We ate at a common mess hall just like the military and we’d line up and everybody went through the chow line and then we’d have tables like this that we ate at. At first, maybe one or two times, we ate as a family, but as time wore on, as we made friends, we ate with our friends, 12 so I don’t ever recall eating with my family after maybe the first three or four months. We all ate with friends, so, that essentially broke up the family. Japanese are pretty tight family, and do things together. My father passed away also, and my mother had to work in the kitchen. So, my brother ate with his friends, my sister ate with her friends, and I ate with my friends. We never ate together as long as I can remember. The schooling was in a barrack, and at first we all went to school in barracks. This is how a military barrack is like—I don’t know if you remember what Fort Douglass looked like, but at any rate, they are kind of barracks and we had all our classes there. I went from a segregated school in California where it was all Mexican and Japanese, to a non-segregated school of all Japanese. We had one white student and he was the son of an administrator and I think he’s still alive and he comes to some of our reunions, but he spends half his time in Alaska and half in the United States. But he was the only Caucasian that was in our school, so we were not a segregated school. SL: So, what changes did you notice when you came back to Ogden after Heart Mountain? RU: I lived on 25th Street; the Akisadas, they had this American cafe, which is a little café. When I came out, my mother worked at Esther Hall, which was a women’s dormitory, and they didn’t have any facilities for men, so my brother and I lived with the Akisadas. Their two sons, Utaka Akisada and Tsutomu Akisada, were both in the Service at the time. I guess Utaka was with 442 and I lived upstairs in a room and I’m pretty sure that they were pretty upset with me because I was 13 living by—my brother went into the Service—I was living by myself and I hung around with all the older guys, wild guys, and with Tatsumi Misaku, and there’s a whole bunch of older people that came out of the camps that ran around together on 25th Street. I remember that the American Café was a very small café, and I would get up and eat breakfast and she’d make toast for me and eggs and then walk up 25th Street to Central High School. At that time, the group of us that hung around 25th Street, a lot of them came out of the camp. The only ones that didn’t, I think, was Tats Misaka and Shinji. But Shinji was a nice young guy that used to go to church all the time, so we didn’t see him that much. But the guys that hung around 25th Street were…we weren’t a gang, it was sort of a club-like. We had a group of young people, and I remember Wat’s brother Tats was like my older brother because my brother was in the service; he would kind of take care of me with this young group of people that hung around 25th. 25th Street was kind of our playground. I go to Ogden High reunions and they mentioned what they would do when they on the weekends had nothing to do; they would come down to 25th Street and park and watch the excitement. I said, “You know, I was one of the actors on 25th Street” because we ran up and down 25th Street like it was our playground, really. We stayed up all night long playing. Wat was gone at the time and Shinji was sleeping, but the rest of us were out there and they all smoked and drank, but I guess Mom had got ahold of Tats and said, “Don’t let him smoke or drink,” so I never smoked and I still don’t smoke or drink to this day and never 14 did because of that. But we ran up and down 25th Street like it was a playground and I remember we ran across a lot of soldiers, and they’d call us “Japs” and we didn’t know what to do. But there were too many soldiers, so we took it. There was a Yellowstone Hotel and I don’t remember the name of the other hotels, but that was sort of our meeting ground where we would all get together and stay out. We used to go to the Berthana, and I don’t know if you remember Berthana, but it was a skating rink, and we used to have our skating parties there. Once in a while we’d sponsor it because that was a revenue-generating thing, and we needed money for our club called Ogden Lobos; I don’t know if you remember the Ogden Lobos. I was in and out of that group because I was in the Service and I came to Salt Lake. But Electric Alley was another playground for us. A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of the Japanese lived in that area: Electric Alley, all of us young people played in that Electric Alley. Right next to Electric Alley was the Japanese Association Office. Shinji’s grandfather was the head of the Japanese Association and that’s where they had the Japanese school where all the Japanese kids would go there to learn Japanese and I was too young to take Japanese at the time. But that was our playground where we did a lot of things. I remember we used to play marbles and Fuku Yano was a very good marble player and we used to play, oh, there would be a string that would be across two trees and we’d have to chase each other. I forgot the name of the game, and we also used to play hide-and-seek there. The Japanese schoolteachers, I don’t remember who they were. I remember Shinji’s grandpa; 15 gosh, he had this butch haircut. He was mean looking, kind of a hefty guy, and he always scared me. But anyway, that was sort of our playground. The Buddhist church was located right near there and across the Buddhist church was a long cement loading dock for trucks and that was where we played hockey. I don’t know if you remember this or not Shinji, but we used to get these cans and make hoofs out of the cans and we used to make stilts and get up and walk across from all around that area there. We used to play kick the can and hockey on that stadium, and I don’t know if you remember, there were a lot of us that did that. Grant Avenue and Lincoln was essentially the meeting place of a lot of the Japanese, Electric Alley, I just remember was the only place we had the playground. We played baseball there and we did a lot of what we call sword fighting. At the Japanese Buddhist church they showed Japanese movies, and after the Japanese movies, we call chambana, that’s sword fighting, samurai movies. After these sword-fighting movies, we’d go to the back yard behind the Carpenter Paper Company and we’d cut the branches of the trees and make swords out of them, and we’d sword fight, and that was part of our entertainment. I remember David Watanabe was one of the better sword fighters. I remember the Japanese community used to make a float for the 24th of July parade. They had the Japanese Fish and Game Association. Japanese are good sportspeople. They used to love to hunt and they used to love to fish, and I did none of those, but they had the Japanese Fish and Game Association, and they used to make floats and I remember that one of the floats they made was right by Carpenter Paper Company and our house is right next to it, and they made this really 16 beautiful float. I guess it took part in the 24th of July, and they would display that. I don’t know how many years they did it, but I remember one or two years of them doing it because I’ve got pictures of that. They had the Bamboo Noodle Parlor and the Utah Noodle Parlor and Kay’s Noodle Parlor that were close by and the Bamboo was the Kawaguchi’s and the Utah Noodles was my cousin, Iahisei Uno. They ran that initially and I think his in-laws did it before them. Then Kay’s Noodle is on Kiesel Avenue, and Kay Mukai was a very well-known restaurateur. I remember Tats used to go to Kay’s Noodle and play the pinball machine and everyplace had pinball machines at the time and Tats was really good at pinballs, and he’d play for hours. The pool hall was there, too and I don’t remember the name of the pool hall, but it’s run by Yumaguehi brothers, Harry and Sonaisan. A lot of the Japanese used to go play pool, Tats was a good pool player. I was too young to play pool and Sonaisan was a mean guy, I mean he was tough-looking, and he talked tough too. He would never let me go past the partition. I always watched Tats and them play, and Tats was very good and I think he put some money playing pool and I think he made money playing pool. Like I said, the playground was Electric Alley, and when we used to play I remember the El Borracho was right on the corner there, but above it was a hotel. I don’t know the name of the hotel. Women used to come out to the back porch of the hotel as we were playing baseball: pitching and things like that. And they were very scantily dressed and it didn’t occur to me who they were until a little bit later. They looked, kind of watching, kind of cheering for us, and I 17 remember walking down Electric Alley a number of times during summer time, and in the back of these hotels, these women are taking sunbaths with no clothes on. We were kind of innocent and wondering, you know, but you see these nice-looking women in the back of the hotels taking a sunbath. Well, anyway, 25th Street was a very exciting place. SL: Did you ever have any contact with Annabelle Weakly at Porters and Waiters? RU: Annabelle Weakly: I did after I found out about it. We became very good friends and Annabelle Weakly had something to do with the Porters and Waiters Club and that was one of the best places for entertainment on 25th Street. I remember everybody used to go there because the best music they had there. One of her body guards was a guy named, I think it was Lyle Kurasuki. He was a great big, hefty Japanese guy. I guess he used to chauffer for her and things like that. Maybe some of the older people would know, but it was on the bottom of 25th Street on the left side of the street as you go down to the Station. I remember the Station because when I got out of camp, I was looking for a job and I went to work at Robin’s cannery and a couple of us got into a little trouble there and so we had to leave. We were looking for a job and Aki Yamaguchi’s dad was a labor agent, and for some reason he and the Eccles really got along well and they really treated him extraordinarily well. I could never find out what the connection was, but I heard that while he was on the railroad he did something: he either saved the life of Mr. Eccles or something. But anyway, this is something I don’t know how you document it, this rumor that it had, but they really treated him well. 18 So, Aki Yamaguchi’s dad was a labor agent for the railroad and I was looking for a job. I was only fifteen, but Aki says, “You know, I think I can get you a job.” I says, “Okay.” And so he asked his dad if I could work for them and his dad said, “Well, we’ll just put you down as eighteen,” and he hired me and sent me out to Nevada. So I was out in Palisades, Nevada, about a whole summer long working all across the Nevada desert. The following year, Aki’s dad got a job for Tats, Oscar, me, and Norman Enomoto and there was one or two others, and Will Shimizu. We would work on the section as a group and we went over to the trestles that crossed the Salt Lake and then Promontory Point. We laid rails over there. But that was only kind of job we could get, and it just happened to be that Mr. Yamaguchi would hire us, but we had a hard time finding a job. I remember my classmates all got jobs in town working in offices and working for their parents and things like that. I remember the professor; Jennings Olson was the name of the philosophy professor, and I just really admired him and I kept in touch with him even after I graduated and had contact with him on several occasions before he died. WM: He was my classmate. Jennings? RU: Yeah, and he was a weightlifter? WM: Oh, was he? He was kind of a sissy kid, he wouldn’t play football or things like that. That was too tough for him. But he was always a brain. RU: Yeah. You know, when he was teaching at Weber College, he had filled out and he… 19 WM: Oh yeah? RU: Yeah. And he’d always remind me of a Greek philosopher and he really put on weight, and he did a lot of weight lifting. Yeah. Jennings Olson. WM: That’s a surprise because he’s kind of a good friend of mine. He needed help in algebra one time, or math, and so I went up to his place and helped with his math and he invited me to stay for dinner and that’s the first time I ever ate artichoke. I didn’t know what that little thorn was, you’re not supposed to eat that. But that’s a surprise, I didn’t know that. RU: He was the nicest guy I ever met. I mean, he just… WM: We used to call him J-G because his middle name was “Gee.” RU: Yeah, Jennings Gee Olson. WM: Yeah, we’d call him “Jay,” “Jay Gee son,” “Jayco.” SL: All right, well I appreciate you both coming out here and spending some time with us.