Oral History Program Raymond Uno Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 May 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Raymond Uno Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 May 2019 Copyright © 2024 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Railroad Sesquicentennial Project. In 2019, the joining of the railways at Promontory Point in Utah celebrated its 150th anniversary. This oral history project was conducted at the Union Station in Ogden, Utah, on May 9 and 10, 2019, and captured stories from individuals and their family members who worked on the railroad throughout the intermountain west. ____________________________________ 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 Lorrie Rands, 10 May 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Raymond Uno on May 10, 2019 at the Union Station in Ogden with Lorrie Rands. Raymond talks about his time working for the railroad as a gandy dancer when he was a teenager, and his memories of Ogden during that time. Also present is Alyssa Dove LR: Alright, today is May 10, 2019. We are at the Union Station in Ogden, Utah with Raymond Uno talking about his time on the railroad for Special Collections at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands and Alyssa Dove is with me. Raymond, let’s just start with when did you start working on the railroad? RU: It was 1946. My paycheck came from the Southern Pacific Railroad. The reason I went to work for the railroad is that I was in a concentration camp during the War and my father passed away the first year we were there, and we were in for a little over three years. When we got out, my mother had a relative in Ogden so we returned to Ogden, but we had been in California before. My mother got a job at Esther Hall, which is a Methodist women’s home on Adams and 25th Street. Since that was a women’s dormitory, they had no place for any males and so I was separated from my mother and I was able to live with a couple whose two sons were in the Service, so my brother and I went to live there. When we got out of the camp, the only things we had were the clothes we wore and they gave us twenty-five dollars and a ticket to wherever we wanted to go, we ended up in Ogden. So my mother being a widow, incarcerated for over three years, we had no possessions, no money. So when I got out, if I needed to buy anything, I had to have my own money. My brother went into the Service and 1 I was living alone and I needed to have a job. A friend of mine says, “Well, I think my dad could get you a job.” I says, “Okay.” He took me over to his dad and he signed me up for the railroad. He said, “You have to be 18,” and I was 15 years old at the time. He says, “Don’t worry, we’ll sign you up,” so signed me up, says I’ll work on the railroad. Little did I know what I would be doing, nor where I would be going. I ended up going to a place called Palisade, Nevada out in the desert. I was the youngest person there ‘cause everybody else was either eighteen or older. Most of them were into thirties and forties and fifties, older men that worked on the railroad. When I went there, I didn’t know what I’d be doing. Well, I found out this is what they call an extra-gang that I was on. This extra-gang, what they would do is they would lay rail, or they would go where there was a railroad wreck, or anything that needed to have railroad workers. So I got involved in that and I ended up as what they call a gandy dancer; you probably are familiar with the gandy dancer, that’s someone who spikes mauls. I ended up being a gandy dancer, and the conditions of the workers, we lived in boxcars and we ate out of the boxcars where they had a kitchen there. I know that the first week I was there I would have to put my hands under water and stretch them ‘cause all day long we held a spike maul and my hands were just not accustomed to that so I stretched my fingers. I found out that what we would be doing is essentially either laying rail or fixing rails, and that’s eight hours a day. You get up in the morning and you go where we had to go and we 2 would be putting spikes in the rails so that it would firm up the rails that we put in, and we essentially did that all day. Nevada, in the summertime, it is really, really hot. We were there from the time we went to work, until the time we finished work, we’re in the hot sun all day long working. The work was very dangerous and you could get injured in many, many ways. I remember that when the streamliner came we’d have to just jump out of the way. Now, they’d warn us a streamliner’s coming, so we have to jump out of the way. We worked from Wendover to Reno, so we hit all those towns in between: Elko, Carlin, Battle Mountain, I can’t remember them all but all those small towns in between. I remember working at all those places. The conditions of the work were probably somewhat similar to what they did before the War. The Railroad made some improvements but we still worked, essentially, under the same conditions. So what I was doing after the War was essentially what they did before the War, laying the rails down. I remember that we sort of had a mixed-group. We had Japanese, Mexicans, Native Americans, and all the people were twice my age and I’m fifteen years old. I don’t know what you people did when you were fifteen but that was quite an experience for me. The following year, I still needed a job, I had no money, so I signed up and worked out of the Ogden section. Out of the Ogden section, we covered Promontory Summit and the railway trestles. The working conditions were almost the same. I was really hot because it’s out in the desert so I remember that if you get thirsty they have a little bag, everybody drinks out of the same bag. The working conditions were such that 3 we’re a section gang so we would do all the rail repairing, putting in new rails or whatever up to the Promontory Point, or the Promontory Summit. I remember it was really hot and we’d get dirty. More people worked here then. I was all alone in Nevada, here I had some friends that were working. After work, we’d all jump in a car and all go up to the Pineview Dam and get a nice clean shower or a bath there. Then I remember the foreman was a Greek guy and really, really a nice guy. He used to use some terms that I can’t remember now but they were Greek terms about food and work and stuff like that. We worked all summer long and our wages were essentially what they paid all railroad workers, like when I worked in Nevada, I was only 15 but I got paid what the older workers got. So for me, that was big money. I could not have earned that kind of money anywhere else. When I worked the second time in the section, it was the same thing. We got the same pay as all the railroad employees. I know that most in Nevada and in Ogden, when I worked, mostly in Nevada, we’d have to put in overtime because we’re called the extra-gang; any emergency, we’d have to go there and you’d work as long as it took to finish up the job, so I got paid time and a half and believe me that was big money. So although it was hard work it was worth the money. LR: That’s awesome. So when you were working in Ogden, when it would get cold, how did you stay warm when you were working outside? RU: Well, it was in the summertime so we took everything off when we were working and got a nice sun tan. LR: So you never worked in the wintertime? 4 RU: Didn’t work then, just during the summer vacation. I was going to school otherwise. The one thing is working both places really helped me physically. I played football at Ogden High School and at Central Junior High School, and I also wrestled and the work out really helped me. I took the state wrestling championship because I was in good condition. LR: Yeah. While you were working, was there any sort of discrimination at that time? RU: No. Being young, and we’re in a little gang, a group of people, that’s all we work with so as far as I know there was no discrimination. When I was on the extragang, we were all mixed minorities so I never experienced, I didn’t even know what discrimination was. AD: Are there any experiences of the railroad that really stand out? RU: Oh yeah. They have what they call tie plates and these are plates that are put between the rails to make sure that they don’t move. They load those on a big, open railroad car and we’d pick those up and throw them—it’d be all four and we’d go down there and throw those out. I tell you, railroad work is really dangerous and those tie plates are about maybe 20 pounds and they’re about a foot in size. When I was going down one time, one of the guys was coming up and the corner hit me on the head there and my face got all bloody. Everybody didn’t know what to do because my face was all bloody. They took me down and they wiped the blood off. I still have a dent in my head. That was a good experience, and like I said, there’s so many things that could happen on the railroad with spike mauls, with spikes, with railroad ties, with the railroad. We used to have to unload those 2,000-pound rails with tongs, and 5 you know now they have a machine that just move them, but they’d get eight of us and we’d line up and we’d take those. A Lot of things could happen unloading those things. I remember there was railroad spikes that were in barrels, you had to carry those, they’re really pretty heavy and taking them from one place to the other was a good experience for me as far as strength is concerned. I was small but I was strong enough to do most of the things. LR: How many summers did you work on the railroad? RU: I worked two summers, 1946 and 1947. In 1948 I joined the Service so I was gone. LR: What were some of the differences working in Nevada and in Ogden? RU: Nevada, you’re out in the desert and we had to do all the emergency things so we’re always going back and forth. Nevada was really, really hot and then we had the responsibility, if they had fires on or near the tracks, we’d have to go out there and help put them out. If there was any derailing or the tracks are not holding up where they have to go, emergency, hurry up and do everything really fast because the trains are always going. I just remember the streamliners going and that was something that, for me, a great experience because I never knew anything about railroads and so I learned about streamliners and some of the new streamliners that were going through at that time. LR: What is a streamliner? RU: A streamliner is—right now, they’re all yellow. The engine is yellow, most of them. The streamliners are... What do they call it? They’re extra and people who 6 rode on it paid a little more to ride on the streamliners ‘cause they were kind of luxury cars at the time. Then they used to be fast because they’re streamlining. LR: Okay, gotcha. That makes more sense. Before we turn off the camera, is there any other story about the railroad that you’d like to share? That just pops into your head? RU: Yeah, all I know is that working on the railroad at that time, I think the conditions were essentially the same at the time we worked as before the War, so most of the things that I did as a gandy dancer was putting the rails in. I got to see most of Nevada ‘cause we went through all the small towns from Wendover to Reno. I might be the only worker that’s alive that has worked both the Nevada stretch where the Chinese came and then the Utah stretch between Ogden and Promontory Summit. That’s quite the experience for a 15-year-old, 16-year-old kid. I don’t think there’s anybody alive right now that has worked on Nevada and the Utah line. What were you doing when you were fifteen? LR: Not that. I worked with my dad, but it was easy compared to what you did. RU: I know that I was going to Ogden High and my classmates, who were the Eccles and the Richs, they were all going to Palm Springs or taking a trip to Europe. LR: And then you were going and working on the railroad. RU: Yeah. Nancy Eccles was my classmate and Sally Rich was a classmate and they all come from very prominent families in Utah. LR: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. RU: Well, hope it helps you a little bit. 7 LR: Oh, it does. I’ve heard the term gandy dancer, but I never knew what it was, so I learned something today and I appreciate it. RU: Get me a spike and a spike maul and I’ll show you what they do. 8