1 100 1 https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/f4049220dcac832a6457dca9f4115537.pdf 0751e8d87eb59c244e1da3823d8f8b04 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with John Ellington, July 5, 2008, Denver, Colorado INTERVIEWER: [00:00] of July, 2008. We’re in Denver, Colorado, and we are speaking with John Ellington of Arkansas---Jerome, Denson, Arkansas. And on interviewing is Robert Horsting, and on camera, audio, and logging, is Lisa Sueki. I’d like to thank you very much for coming in and agreeing to do this interview today. And on behalf of the Go For Broke National Education Center, and the Hanashi Oral History Program---welcome you here. ELLINGTON: Well, it’s good to be here. And I feel like it’s a privilege to do something for the Go For Broke. ’Cause I feel like they did so much for me. If it hadn’t been for them and a bunch of other World War II folks, I may be speaking German and goose-stepping. INTERVIEWER: Tell us, where are you from specifically, and what’s your connection to this history? ELLINGTON: All right. I’m from Jerome, Arkansas where the Jerome Relocation Center is located. And the mailing address and all, of the relocation center, was Denson. It had its own post office and all. My---some of my people had been in that area since 1895, when my grandfather come in out of Mississippi. He was a millwright at the big flooring mill that was at Blissful. That’s what Jerome was called. Then World War I---they confused the mailing and spelling and whatever---a lot of the mail when to Blytheville, or whatever. So they named it Jerome, who I think was the son of one of the Bliss---?Cookes? or the ?Oakes?, one of them that owned that mill. That was a little before my time. And my father was born there. [02:00] And he died in the camp, because he was living in the camp when he died, less than a mile from where he was born. INTERVIEWER: And what’s your father’s name? ELLINGTON: John. [laughter] And sometimes if you read in the---some of the tin camps and whatever---some of the quotations, and some of that says John Ellington. That’s not this John Ellington, that’s my father. And he mostly was---went by the name of Ernest. And by a lot of interviewing and papers they always used the first name, so . . . INTERVIEWER: What is your date of birth? ELLINGTON: December the 21st, 1937. INTERVIEWER: And what’s your earliest recollection of meeting anyone of Japanese heritage? ELLINGTON: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 19 �Well, it would have probably---it would have been in the late ’42 or early ’43 as far as meeting one. But when they---I knew about the war and all because my grandfather was a carpenter at that time. And he worked in the camp as a supervisor and a carpenter in building it, and my father worked there some. But he wasn’t much of a carpenter, he couldn’t hit a nail, and he didn’t like to get his feet off the ground. So but then I remember seeing them when they began to come in because where we lived, a lot of our coming in and out, we come through the camp because it was closer to get to civilization. [laughter] And to get up to my grandparents’ house, which was three miles above the camp. INTERVIEWER: What do you recall of any discussion between your dad and your grandfather about these people? [04:00] ELLINGTON: No. I never heard my grandfather, Granddaddy have much of a discussion on anything. [laughter] But not on that. Now Daddy and some of the more other folks, you know I remember them talking about it. At that time, I don’t remember a lot of what they were saying, but you get on up towards ’43 and the early---the latter part of ’43 and ’44 before they closed the camp, then I do remember. And we’ve met quite a bit, and I won’t try to use too many of the names because I can’t pronounce them. And we knew quite a few of the folks that was in the camp; we met them. And particularly on the men because Daddy had become the number one bootlegger. Not moonshine, they were bottling bondage stuff. And some of the Japanese would take a drink. So they did come out, you know, and the spirits. And he had a cooler fixed up on our property, but about 50 yards from the government line. And they would come through the fence and serve themselves, and put their own money or an IOU in a (inaudible) coffee can. And my brother and I would---had entrepreneurship going. We could take a tub full of ice with various soda waters in it. Not Coca-Colas or that, but there was a bottling---a little bottling plant in Dermott, and it bottled double colas, and some oranges, and some grapes. And even though everything was rationed, we could generally get what we wanted because the gentleman what owned the plant drank Canadian Club Whiskey. [06:00] So to get him a bottle every once in a while, we kind of probably violated a few of the rationing laws. And then they had a ice house, and he would get a keg of fish ice, a 300 pound block and put in the dug out cooler for cool the beer. And that’s where I would get the ice for the Coke. We’d carry those up on a sled and leave it, and ride the horse back home. And then again, they would make their own change, do their own doings, and put the money in the (inaudible) coffee cans. INTERVIEWER: Just to be clear: who was your clientele? ELLINGTON: The internees. [laughter] The Japanese internees. INTERVIEWER: So basically, you had an honor store at the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). ELLINGTON: It was. And I think on the bus, yesterday I was talking about it. So far as I know, and to the best of my knowledge, we never lost a penny. And because in my experience with life now, those were the most honest, with the highest degree of integrity people under some very, not very pleasant circumstances that I’ve ever met. And so far as I know, the Japanese Americans today, and the last time I did a little study on it, as an ethnic group was the most highly educated, and the least criminal record of what---of any of our makeup of America. Now we’ve had some more come in since then, and I’m not as familiar with This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 19 �some of the others. But I’m saying about 10 or 12 years ago, to the best that I could look [08:00] and find, they fit it. And by being---I’m not sure that I could have done---been grown like some of them, could have done what they did. So you know, I’m rather proud of them. I’m glad we’ve got some Americans. CREW MEMBER: Speed. ELLINGTON: All right. We did some visiting with some of the ones who was in the camp. Because I think we’ve stated we’d come in and out through the camp a lot at the time. And today, somebody from another camp I was talking with them, they said, “How did we get in and out? Did we have a pass?” I said, “No, we just drove in, drove out, drove through.” And I think probably Jerome and (inaudible) may have been a little more lax than some of the other places because it was rather isolated. [laughter] One road in, one road out. INTERVIEWER: Personally, do you remember what was the purpose of your visit? ELLINGTON: Well, it would have been friendship, because Daddy had gotten to know some of them. And when he worked, and then in the process of his entrepreneurial bootlegging, got to know more. And one in part[icular] stayed with us a good bit out there. He would have been kind of a scout or whatever for it. And we got to know his family; the ?Manjees?. They were from Seattle. George and his brother Jimmy worked, he was kind of in charge of the mule lot. I remember Jimmy, and this wasn’t back then [10:00], but he told me years ago, I finally found him when visiting. That at time too he let the mule out so he could take a trip and scout around the country and visit, looking for him. [laughter] And his mother---their father was a World War I veteran. So you know, it would have been extremely hard for her and them to come in. There was a family from Hawaii, and I cannot pronounce the last name correctly. Now they were out at the house some, and they had a son who was about my age, he may have been a little older, and a daughter that was probably a tad under. And I know he and I used to entertain ourselves there, and she---his little sister running along on her little short legs couldn’t keep up, but she tried catching the chickens with a wire and crook on it that he showed us how to you know, make. And then some of the ladies, and either her or Miss Manjee or some of the others taught my mother how to cook rice so it would be the same every time. My family has always been rice eaters. We didn’t raise rice then, but even Daddy said that he was raised up was eating rice because it’s a good food for you, it absorbs flavors of others, and it was cheap. So you know, we’ve always had that. And they also showed mother how to use some soy sauce to soak and tenderize meat. So we learned a lot from them in that respect. Coming in and out, I remember a time or two [12:00] we’d be coming and we’d be approaching big (inaudible) from the east. And all of a sudden, it looked like a bunch of turtles sliding off of a log as the upper, older boys and the young men would be bailing back in the big (inaudible) because they were swimming in their birthday suits. So [laughter] I remember it wasn’t then, but a few years later, I got to know and be friendly with Sam ?Maboo?, and he said he might have been one of those little boys, because he was a few years older than I am. But talking with a couple of the ladies, it---well meeting our reunion a couple years back, they were talking about how some time they would---they call it sneak under the barbed wire and go to Jerome, maybe get you know a Coke or something. And I asked them, “Well, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 19 �why did you do that?” Except going under the wire was a lot closer to get to Jerome than it was going to the main gate and getting out. They would have had another half mile to their walk. But the guarding and all there was pretty lax. INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you. You were talking about all of these different recipes and cooking hints that your mother got from the people there. What was your favorite dish? ELLINGTON: Well, it wasn’t new recipes as much it was just how to do a better job of cooking rice. And then how you could use soy sauce to soak a piece of tough meat that would make it tender. But as far as you know a new recipe, they’d come up with something like it, it wasn’t that. It was just a way to improve what you were doing. But back where the workers had their---[14:00] was raising the produce. Now, this was in what was a colony that was designed---it was called Deep Elm. And it had about six miles of gravel road, and the way it teed off and on, there was a house on the---ever 40 acres off of the road, and then there was still some that hadn’t been done. But it was designed for people to come out of some of the hills and mountain where it was poor to a more fertile ground because they had a new, good house: outhouse, smoke house, chicken house, and a barn. And they were built in the ’30s, and they were wired for electricity, and we got electricity out there in 1948. So as you know, we would go through the camps and maybe be over to Manjees’s or the other family that I can’t pronounce. And we’d have to go to the bath house. Well, my brother and I kind of liked that because they had running water, and had electricity, and didn’t have to pump the water. And some things that was considered an inconvenience from what they had left in California, we kind of thought was rather luxurious. But the men and the older boys had a pretty good chore in the late summer and in the fall, and even some in the winter was cutting enough firewood. Because it wasn’t as much coal use as they use in the potbelly stoves and all was firewood. And they would cut it, bring it in, split it, and stack it, and they’d have some pretty good sized stacks you know, of that to go on. And for a family maybe a celebration, or a birthday, or something [16:00] of some sort, some of them would cook a little on their potbelly stove. Maybe you know, some chicken or something that they may have somehow or another wire worked to have got the ingredients that it would have been more of a traditional Japanese meal, and not what some of the mess hall was. Because a lot of the mess hall was pretty well, as I understand, based on maybe Army provisions. And it wasn’t necessarily some of the things that they were used to. And I remember Daddy procuring chickens for them. They got where there wasn’t a chicken for sale nowhere around there, you know. But they---now I never did eat any of that, and they would you know coming through the camp or to the camp a lot of times, the---and particular on Sunday afternoon, it looked like a lot of the mothers and the children would be behind the camp, walking down the gravel road. You know, just a stroll. And I just remember how colorful the dresses and all they were. You know, just all bright colors and walking along. And that’s the same road that the boys had to if they couldn’t hitch a ride on the Army truck to get back here to take---you’d go swimming. And in the berry picking time, some of them back behind the camp and north, there was what was called a deadening. Where the trees had been girdled and killed with arsenic and a mixture of lye put in that girdling. And a lot of berry bushes, vines, briar patches [18:00] had taken over. And so they would pick the blackberries, and would supplement their diet and then dewberries, and get covered with chiggers. Because that---at the reunion I made at ’96 in Torrance, California. One of the main questions that the internees was wanting to know: do you still have fireflies? Do you still have the chiggers? And is the water still soft that you can’t hardly get soap off of you in the shower? And it was yes, yes, yes. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 19 �INTERVIEWER: What are chiggers? ELLINGTON: A chigger is a little-bitty red bug. Now, he is not much bigger than a pinpoint. And he’ll get around your shoe top, your (inaudible) top around you. It seemed like more so around your waist or whatever, and he’ll bury in. And when you locate him, it’s a---he’s bright red from blood, and it gets rather itchy. And if you start scratching it, well then you can get your little, you know, infection like any other scratch. They are a nuisance, and I am highly delicious to them I guess. Because when my brother and I started clearing land with the stumps all back and behind the camp where we’re farming now, well, that’s the camp. In 1953, a red bug would not get on him. He’s never had one, and they would eat me alive. So you know, when you’d come in at night, you’d have to use something in your bathwater to take them off, and mother had some Germ-Trol, and I don’t remember whether it was Watkins Company or from some other. You put about a fourth of a cup in [20:00] your bathtub, and you could kill them and get rid of them. But some of that was a little on the interesting side. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: We’ve heard people talk about some of the other life around there as far as . . . ELLINGTON: Well, one---some things I never gave much thought to. But I met a lady at the reunion in ’96, and she did not know that there had been much interaction between any of the internees and any of the locals. And I spoke at the reunion, and she’d come around afterwards. But she was the block, she was over (inaudible), and she had six children, so she didn’t get out. But she was asking, and she said she really had a hard time letting her children get out of sight or what but on account of the snakes. Because it was a low, swampy area and we did kind of have a rattlesnake haven, a moccasin haven, and a copperhead haven. All three of those which are poisonous. Now to go along with that, we had plenty of garden snakes, chicken snakes, king snakes, blue racers. INTERVIEWER: Never heard of that one. ELLINGTON: The blue racer? Well, it’s a black snake. And you could mess with him sometimes, and you can get after him, and he’ll take off. You turn around and run for him, and he’ll run after you. And I think that’s why it was called a blue racer. And he’s about the same snake that out in the hills they called them coach whips. [laughter] They’re---and also around the swamp and a lot of those real marshy, stale, boggy, stagnated bayous and [22:00] ponds we had a mud snake that people call a stinging snake. And there’s folks, there’s old folks at home that would swear up and down that they could sting a tree, and the tree would die. You know, their bayou is full of that stinging snake. It was a very sluggish snake, and it would hit at you with its tail, but he did not have a stinger. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: Now, I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned earlier that for you, by comparison, the lodging and the amenities there as far as you know, the showers and running water, electricity. These were things that you, who lived in that neighborhood, didn’t have yet. ELLINGTON: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 19 �No, we did not have it. Now, on the barracks, they were not---I mean they were tough because they were made out of every what kind of grain wood that under the hurry up circumstance it would start drying and kind of crack. And knots would fall out, and it was covered with the tar paper. As a consequence it was rather cold, and they did have---and when they started moving in, there was basically no partitioning for a family that just had a certain---you know, like a floor space, and an entrance. And as bad as that was, after they got the tar paper and all, you’d go around to a lot of the farms there’s up and down Bayou Bartholomew and some of other places to a lot of the sharecroppers weren’t any better off. Because they lived in what was referred to as a shotgun house. There was normally somewhere between 12, 14, 16, 18 foot wide and maybe from 36 to 48 foot long. In---[24:00] no, it may have two rooms, it may have three rooms. And the reason it was called a shotgun because all of the doors were in line. You could shoot a gun, the bullets go all the way through the dell. And a lot of them were board and batten. Which the---and a lot of it was cypress lumber on those sharecroppers. But the boards may be from 10 inches, 10 inches some of them up to 18 inches wide. And then as the cypress dried, it would create cracks in the wall. And then the other board was now near the batten. And they were not sealed either, a lot of them. I mean you---that’s all you had between you and the elements. They did not have the tar paper on the dell that the---like the camp had. So but one thing the camp did do, both Jerome and (inaudible), it put some cash money in some people’s hands that in essence had never seen cash money. Everything had been done on scrip or been on down---they’d jot them down the book; charge account at the end. But everybody in southeast Arkansas, eastern Mississippi, and northeastern Louisiana that could pick up a hammer or a saw becomes a carpenter and building that. And generally, they would have a few folks in charge that knew what they were doing like my grandfather and some more. So the others could build, and you know of course you had to dig ditches for the sewer line, and all of that. But those people saw some cash money that had never seen any. And then some of the other local folks, if you had a clean corn crib, [26:00] or a barn or something that was clean and would feed somebody. Well then, for room and board, you know some of the other people that wasn’t necessarily working in the camp picked up some money from the workers. Because, you know, there wasn’t a Motel 6 or a boarding house on every corner. And it was a lot of people involved, and they were building both Jerome and Rohwer. And a little later---and I don’t remember what year that it was---but at Monticello, 24 miles west of Dermott, using the same type construction and all, and basically the same type of layout, there was an Italian prisoner of war camp built. And a lot of the folks from---or several of the folks from Lake Village, which was---had a large Italian population got jobs over there as interpreters. And might have---some of them might have been their cousins, you know. [laughter] But the Italians there were not bothered. And some of the elder, you know the immigrants, did not speak English still. And when I was in high school, I got out in ’55. Some of the grandmothers there in Lake Village still didn’t speak English. And if you tried to get a date with one of their granddaughters and she answered the phone, forget it. Because we had two strikes against us. Number one: we weren’t Catholic, and number two: we weren’t Italian. So you know, [laughter] that was just about as isolated in that respect [28:00] than it would be at trying to date one of the Japanese girls. You know, if---but of course, at my age four, five, and six along then, I wouldn’t have---I didn’t know what that was, I learned later. INTERVIEWER: Given your age, I want to still ask you: what do you recall of any discussion of the difference in the amenities that your home had? You know, the idea that you didn’t have electricity or plumbing---indoor plumbing---versus well, here’s this camp, these Japanese people are coming there. They’ve got things you haven’t got. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 19 �ELLINGTON: Well, that was a bone of contention from some of the local people. You know, that we had visitation with some of them too, and some of them resented the fact that here Uncle Sam was providing them electricity and all of this other. Of which if you did not live right out there on that main line, you didn’t have electricity. And even if you lived on what---you know we still call it the main line---if you didn’t have enough of the dollars, you still didn’t have electricity. And I was---at that particular time, my grandparents didn’t have electricity; not from the high line. Now I remember, he had a Delco system. And so it was later on that he run---that the lines got run and he only lived and like where I live now is a quarter of a mile off of the main line. So you know, most of the electricity at that time coming through wasn’t necessarily so many of the homes. You know, the business and whatever, and then (inaudible) you know from electricity from up here to down there somewhere. [30:00] So it was . . . But you know, it’s one, particular Japanese man and he was from the rice growing area, and he had some sons. And I do not remember his name, it’s been so long. But they went back, and he had managed to hold onto his land, and went through some lawyers, and you know some more stuff. Which some families held onto theirs because they had a Caucasian friend or something that kind of looked after it, and took care of it ’til they got back. And some, I think they even went so far and maybe traded some property. You know, they sold it to this one, and when they got back, it was sold back to them, you know. But it was not a lot of that. But and I remember he drove a government pickup, and Daddy always called him the number one. And I remember him sitting there, I’d forgotten what brand he’d drink, but he would take a nip, and him and Daddy discussing. Well, I’ve heard a lot of their discussion of sit and watching, and didn’t make as much meaning on me as I---through the years. But afterward different circumstances, I heard Daddy quoting him. So you know, there’s been some things that worked out pretty good, and some that didn’t work out. But I recall one man---and again I wish I’d have been old enough and with a tongue limber enough to have spoken the names. But when you’re not---when you don’t hear them, you don’t see them every day. And I always put the accent on the wrong thing, that’s why I don’t do good in Spanish. I don’t do too good in English either. But [32:00] he had been in Europe in the service, and had been, I’m going to use the expression almost blown apart or shot to piece, I don’t remember. But I remember when he and some others that some of them had been wounded or had not got shipped out yet, you know. They were up visiting from Camp Shelby. And they would come out to drink beer or whatever. And this particular one, I remember for about a week, every day they came, and then those others got shipped out. But he laid in the front yard on a blanket in the sun. And he literally the scars, and whatever, he had just been through hell. And I’ve often wondered did he live or did he die? Or you know, what happened. And that’s one of the things, not knowing names and people get gone, and you lose contact. And it was a long time after they closed the camp before I saw another, you know you might see a Japanese in Arkansas. A lot of them that when they left, like George Manjee---well, I mentioned him before---he wound up in---the last account we had of him---was a butcher or whatever in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. And then, you know, I---and then I didn’t hear no more of him ’til I run into a nephew at the ?Torrance? reunion and found out where he lived. He was living with his brother Jimmy in ?Tuscadera?. So I went to visit him, and I really enjoyed the visit with Jimmy and his wife, and all, but George had no memory of it. [34:00] Of the camp, or he didn’t even remember New York, or anything. Until a little old kid, you know George was my hero. Like I said, he stayed with us, he a lot---he had followed a rodeo circuit, and the horses some, and he thought he could ride anything that had hair on it. Well, we had an old mare that he couldn’t ride. She was---she threw him one Sunday afternoon. Now he might have had a little juice that messed him up This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 19 �some, but she threw him to the middle of (inaudible) kid, watching. And he went above the top of a black snake, which (inaudible) burnt down tree. You know, the buzzards could have built a nest on him before he hit the ground. [laughter] But that horse would buck, too. She’d give out, throw you a quit, and go back. She was just an outlaw. And then another time, we were going to ride the bull. There was a big, Hereford bull, but he wasn’t going to ride it like you normally ride it. He’s gong to ride it, sitting on it backwards. Well, that kind of throwed him pretty good. [laughter] But his brother Jimmy was a little---was more stable. And their mother was an extremely gracious lady, and she lived to be right around 100 years old, or a hundred. Because I had---I called up with some of the history of when I did stop, when I went to visit Jimmy. And he has been retired, and lives at Seal Beach now. And about two weeks ago, his niece, who I had met at a reunion in October of ’07 in Las Vegas, she called me and I spoke to her uncle. She was taking him out to eat, and so I spoke to Jimmy again. And I don’t remember, [36:00] he was about 92 or 94 on this birthday; 90 up. He has gotten to be, you know a senior citizen also. But he was a little more stable than his brother. His brother had a little (inaudible) in him. [laughter] A little wild side or whatever. But I mean when I was a little kid, boy it was a lot of fun because he was good to go. [laughter] [pause] INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you, you know your family seemed to have really kind of mesh with the Japanese community there in Jerome, and gotten well really well. How typical was that of other---of the families, the Denson families? ELLINGTON: It probably wasn’t as typical. It was more unique probably than some of the others because like I say, Daddy had done an entrepreneurial enterprise called bootlegging on. But and then there were several Caucasians working in the camps and various things; some women and all. And how friendly some of them were, you know what got and what kind of exchange they had, I don’t know. But I do know so many of them didn’t live, and then their off time come in and out of the camp like we did because of the proximity of where we lived, and that being a shortcut. But when I went to Atascadero to see Jimmy and George, George shocked me because he asked about an old, black man. And I said, “Well, Jimmy, how’d you know him?” Because he lived over on Bayou Bartholomew. Which the way you---any way you want by the road to get there, and you had to go by the road because you couldn’t cross that break had to be two miles from camp. [38:00] And Jimmy kind of met him and some of his looking for the horse at times. And then going over there and fishing, and he would trade on (inaudible) with the old man. I’m saying old man because he was kind of old and elderly. When I knew him, you know because I knew the black man. And he’d trade some fish for some watermelons, or you know they’d do a little trading. And but---and Jimmy and the old man got pretty close. And the old man’s grandson just retired from working at (inaudible) seed company, which is at Jerome. And the grandson when he was a very young man, he as a kid he worked for us some back in the camp. And his grandfather, Abe ?Munyan?, Daddy let him tear down some of the warehouses that were on the verge of falling. You know, deteriorating because of the roofs. So this would have been probably in the ’60s, but Daddy let him tear down some of those bar[rracks], warehouses and he built his church out of them. Because Abe in latter years was a preacher. It may have been then, I don’t recall that, but he was the years that I knew him as well. But he built a church out of those, and then Frank, that was his name was Frank ?Cokely? is the grandson’s name, and a super fine fellow. Daddy let him have some of those---tear those warehouses down, and he built his house out of them. INTERVIEWER: What’s the name of the church? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 19 �ELLINGTON: I don’t know. [40:00] It would have been the kind, the Pentecostal persuasion, I don’t remember. And right now, that particular church is not in operation because we don’t have a lot of people there anymore. Where you used to have somebody on about every 40 acres, quarter of a mile coming around that (inaudible), there’s no one there now; very few. But Frank built his house out of [pause] those salvaged warehouses. And it’s his---some of his kin folks now, I won’t say it’s his mother’s. It could be his stepfather, I’m not sure on that, lives in---they live in that house, and that has been improved on. And Frank who was in the house, and he bought it from the black friend that bought it from a brother, and moved it. And it’s been added on to some, but he lives in one of the houses that was one of the over---you know the honchoed houses in the camp. So . . . INTERVIEWER: What’s the name of the guy who owns that house? ELLINGTON: Now, Frank Cokely. INTERVIEWER: How do you spell his last name? ELLINGTON: C-O-K-L-E-Y I believe, or C-O-K-E-L-Y. Well, we have some more Cokely’s, and they’re spelled different. But---and that house is still there. And then the one that he built is still there, and of course the church that Abe built is---you know, it’s kind of growed up and weeds all around it. But it’s still there last time I went by. So you know, some of the stuff was salvaged. Now after in the early ’50s, I remember on some of the warehouses [42:00] there was some rice stored in them. Somebody put some new tar paper on, because we didn’t have rice stored, and it was under the dell. And they would slide the rice out the back for the truck. Now we did that at the Italian camp in Montesella, because we had hauled our rice at that point in time to a little elevator that a man we was farming with and all had built a little elevator. And when we got it dried down, we would take it out to those warehouses and slide it out. And I got a truck driving lesson. I think I was 13, and we went to (inaudible) and bought an elevator with a little gas motor, and it let on top of that two ton truck. We come back, my brother and my cousin was making me drive, and we got to Montesella, and it’s built on a square, and I went around and squared it the wrong way. Folks got out of the way. [laughter] But that---you know, that’s kind of wandering off of here. Now, I do know that some of the ladies that worked in there got friendly with some of the other ladies, but I don’t think that you had as much visitation as a couple of---some of the men and whatnot did because of the different circumstances. INTERVIEWER: Was there a---what was there in the way of a general store in the area of the town? ELLINGTON: Of course the camp had its own store, about a half a mile off the south border in Jerome, the town of Jerome they had sure enough a general store. Because it had been the store when the mill was functioning, and it just fell in a few years ago. But they had moved out on the hallway. [44:00] And when you went in there, and when you’re talking about general, it was general. You could get some patent medicine of every what---you know, was that time. Cod Liver Oil, and three sixes for Grove’s This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 19 �Chill Tonic. I remember those because we went swamping, we was subject to the mosquitoes and malaria. And don’t you say you’re sick because they going to give you a dose of Grove’s chill tonic or three sixes, and you’re talking about bitter. I think it was straight quinine. And but you could get horse collars, you know a harness for your mules, you could get meat. Because it did have a cooler, and I think the best thing in the world that old dried salami and bologna. I wish we’d get it now, see if it was good. And the post office was there, you know in one corner of it. If you needed kerosene, of which we called cold oil, you know you could get it. There was a gas tank if you needed gas for your car. It just---every what a person, it was the super market of its day. More so than some of the supermarkets today because they don’t necessarily have your parts or your equipment. Like they had the harness, the bridles, and if you needed some horseshoe nails, or some horseshoes. Or if you needed nails to build a barn, well you had it. It had the bins of fatback salt pork. It was just a general store, it had a---the drinks, and that’s where the girls said they would slip under the wire to go down there. They had to walk about a half a mile. INTERVIEWER: [46:00] So you do know of people that did actually go to that general store? ELLINGTON: Yeah. I mean they said they did. I wasn’t at that general store, I don’t know. But I do know along about Christmas time, they kind of wore out (inaudible) Montgomery ward catalogues like the rest of us. But they did use some of the Army trucks and the buses, and they did carry some of the internees to like Portland or maybe Dermott, Lake Village to the surrounding towns if they had any money, they’d do some Christmas shopping. Because one of the men, who his family owned most of Portland, he and I discussed that several times because he talked about . . . INTERVIEWER: How far are those towns? ELLINGTON: Well, Portland 12 miles south. Dermott is seven miles north. INTERVIEWER: I want to ask you to clarify a phrase you used. You said, “Most people kind of wore out those catalogues just like you did.” How did they wear them out? ELLINGTON: Using them. And when they got outdated from ordering stuff like you know last year’s, then they become the official toilet paper of the outhouse. It [laughter] ---my brother and I had entertainment, you know? Like, we didn’t have television. We didn’t have electricity. The battery radio was turned on for the news, but when that catalogue come in, then, we’d sit down. That page was mine. That page was his. You know, both the . . . And you might have to swap a few items [laughter] if one of us had something you might want. Of course, the only thing we ever got out of it was clothes. And my mother---we were very fortunate that my mother [48:00] was an expert seamstress. So she made our clothes. Man, I wore many a flour-sack shirt. [laughter] ’Cause in those days---and if you went to get some kind of sweet or what, for a cow, it’d come in a cloth sack---you know, a big sack. And you matched the patterns. If you went to get some more flour---a sack of flour to put in your flour barrel, you got the patterns, because that was either gonna go into a dress or a skirt or a shirt or, you know, whatever. And, the internees---they used the catalogues to get clothing also. Now, some, on their trips to town, could---you know, could buy This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 19 �some. But, you know, that catalogue wasn’t as important to them as it was to us, because they had bathhouses, and we didn’t. We had a path, not a bath. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: [laughter] And what did that path lead to? ELLINGTON: It led to the outhouse. But then, we was sophisticated. We had a two-holer. [laughter] The unsophisticated folks. The unsophisticated folks, they only had a single hole. [laughter] INTERVIEWER: How did bathing take place on the farm? ELLINGTON: Well, if I would probably pull down my britches and moon ya, I’ve probably still got circles on my behind from taking a bath in a number two washtub. Or it may have been a number three. But I---I mean, and that happened---plumb on up. But---and the water would come out of the pump. We didn’t turn no faucet. You had to pump it. But, look at my---’cause it was hard. But I think we---and---[50:00] we learned responsibility. So when you---in those d[ays], when you got big enough to work, you had a job. It might have been gathering chips to---kindling---to make kindling, to light the fire. It may have been gathering the eggs. You got big enough that you can swing on the pump handle, you might have had to pump water for the livestock. Gather eggs, different things. And I think this was one of the things that hurt the Japanese families that was in the camp. Because they didn’t---they were not at home to really do the---their children to come up on the same responsibility, and talking with some of them. And I saw it to an extent that I didn’t know what I was looking at, that kind of want to eat with their friends, or, you know, run with their friends. And everybody’s right there. And in California---the wasn’t just right there. And so, they were not coming up, you know, knowing that. INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you a little bit . . . You know, I preface again by saying, keeping your age---your youth---in mind, that--ELLINGTON: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: ---how aware were you of any discussion about what was going on in the war in Europe, or in the (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)? ELLINGTON: Right. I remember Daddy, and particularly some of the men out in the camp, more so, talking about it. Because---actually, right there, in that period of time, we had more Japanese American visitors at my house than we did, you know, Caucasians. Then my grandparents would come out of, whatever---’cause Granddad would come get us. He had a pickup. We didn’t. And [52:00] they’d t[alk] some, and I remember them talking about what was taking place. And I did not see it, other than the men that laid on the blanket. But I remember Daddy talking about that in the camp, when a family would receive the word that a husband or a son or a brother had been killed. And---’cause he said, they suffered and cried and mourned, just like we did. Daddy did not have a very high opinion of the Roosevelt administration, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 19 �because of what was done there. And I’d say, he probably buy his---go back to his entrepreneurial business [laughter] He had more contact, and then talking with what the ?Juan Hill? was referred to as number one. He learned more than what most people would have known. And I heard some of that, but it---’cause I’d sit and listen. But I don’t recall remembering just that. I picked up some of that later, that I’d hear Daddy talking about it. ’Cause he could go on a tirade. ’Cause within 12 hours, anything that would be considered bad, they’ll be (inaudible). All the rest of it was political. And then, of course, Daddy was mad at that government project---that colony---’cause they was clearing up land where he wanted to squirrel hunt. [laughter] So . . . Roosevelt didn’t enlighten himself when---you know, when he did that to them. ’Cause as he said, those mothers and fathers in there---they in pain, and they cried for theirs, and here they did not [54:00] have heirlooms and stuff, that some families keep. And some of those things that they burned, or---it would have been good if they buried it, to where they went back and got it. But a lot of the stuff was destroyed, that you could not put a value on, because of the age, and what it meant to the family. INTERVIEWER: What about the local Jerome inhabitants---the original people there---your neighbors? What do you recall of family members---of those families---sons or husbands that went to war? Anybody that may have died? ELLINGTON: Right there, in that little local, I don’t remember any that, per se, died in the Pacific theater. Now, there were some that died in the European theater. Now, up above us, out from Rohwer and McGehee, there were some that died in the Pacific theater. And I did not see it, so I---you know, I just knew that people talked about it. One man got word that his son had gotten killed in the Pacific, and I think he went downtown and shot one of the Japanese internees that were down . . . I don’t---didn’t kill him, but he---you know, he shot him. So that feller would have had some bad feelings. You know, and some of the others, particularly ’cause they’re trying to---you know, you equate some things, not on its own merits, but by association. And which---that’s one of the wor[st]---and, I mean, we’re still guilty of that. You got to our schools, you go to our community, and, you know, “Don’t run with the---that’s the wrong crowd. Birds of a feather flock together,” you know? All the---you know, my grandmother always told me, “Pretty is as pretty does.” And I always tried to [56:00] make sure I didn’t do anything---get caught doing anything that could get back and embarrass her and the family. I wasn’t always pretty. [laughter] Towar[d]--- and then, of course, is---you’re aware---Jerome was actually the last camp that was open to people (inaudible). And it was also the first camp to close. ’Cause in ’42, that---when it hit the beach and all---the closed the Jerome cen[ter]---location center. And those---the remaining internees could go---had a choice to go to the interior or another camp. But as soon as they had got there, they were encouraged to go get a job. But they had to go out of state, because before the governor and all would let the camps be built in Jerome, they got the government to commit, and got some legislation that they could not own property or work in Arkansas, which was a little bit on the unconstitutional side. But they did bring in---put up the---sure enough--- prison wire, around the camp. And they brought in German prisoners of war. And the German prisoners of war---the number was long---it was either ’54 or ’56 that they (inaudible). I don’t remember. I do have a article at home describing some of it, that has the number. But there were several other, lesser-size camps---Robinson and a few other places---that had German prisoners. But Jerome had the most. INTERVIEWER: We have to stop and change our tape there. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 19 �ELLINGTON: All right. Well I’m about run out--- [57:58] END OF AUDIO FILE 1 BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO INTERVIEWER: It became kind of a social center for you at the camp, and your interactivity with either people in the camp, or them coming to your house, as you stated. What was it like when you left? ELLINGTON: Quiet. [laughter] In the last days, when they were leaving, it was kind of like Grand---Grand Central Station. Because some six (inaudible) would show up that was loaded with various things that they had borrowed. I remember canisters of like, chocolate mix, or some strawberry mix or whatever, they didn’t much like them, and that---but when they left, they brought a lot of that out of the mess halls, and all. Because there wasn’t no way we could eat it all, so the hogs got, you know they got a little chocolate. And there were some things that were rationed pretty good that---the food there, and they’re leaving, going to help curtail within that, to ration a few things. But it was quite cushy, you didn’t have the men coming around, and then your mother didn’t see those few ladies that she knew, and you know coming, so it---it was a change. But you know, we say life goes on, you get busy, you get---you lose one thing, you start going---and for several years after that, I’m going to say at least four or five, (inaudible) got letters from several. He never answered a letter, because I mean you’re gone, I’m here, we did it, we can’t continue. You know, on---because distance, we didn’t have to travel. And I remember we got a box of cherries shipped from Washington, or Utah, Idaho, somewhere where they were -- where they grow cherries, and -- and something -- you know what, some things like that, that they would ship back. Some, some food, but, we did not have that much of a social life, and of course (inaudible) we didn’t have that much social life, because you go back to the isolation, and the transportation. INTERVIEWER: How for you---for you personally, what did you miss? ELLINGTON: Well, I missed trying to get them guards to let me shoot their gun, and they didn’t have no bullets for me to shoot that gun. But I---I---I missed going in and through the camp, and looking. You know, like on Sunday afternoon, granddad would pick us up, we’d go up there, and the ladies, and the little children, smaller children, out walking. And they would be behind the camp, or maybe inside the camp on the outpost road. You know, I miss seeing the---some of the old men sitting on a bench, or a keg, or a box or something, beside some of the buildings. I found out later that they were carving, you know, or making things. Some of the deal. And you know, you just miss that. And at times now, driving in, back on that road, same road, something will trigger it, and I can just see the barracks, and see those folks, or I can see the ladies walking, or the men out in the fall, trying to gather the hickory (inaudible) or the (inaudible) or just generally getting out of the camp. And---and just something triggers it, and you can see it. Like you know, one of the main triggers is standing at my kitchen sink, looking out in the backyard at the fireflies. And there’s two or three that I particularly think of when I see that, but I did not know them then, and I know them now, Sumisiki, I look out, you know, and I see her. I met she and Don, and you know they just, oh that---well they just feel like family. You know. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 19 �INTERVIEWER: What, after they were gone, and uh, now this camp becomes a German POW camp. ELLINGTON: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: What---what was the change in---I guess now the social aspect, and ability to go in the camp isn’t quite there, but how did that either benefit or not the other people? ELLINGTON: Well, it curtailed our going in and out. Because you had---you know you went through the guard, and they had bullets in the gate and everything, but still, some of the German prisoners were out. Now they’d have a guard, but they worked. You know they -- some of them picked cotton and did several things, all volunteer. But there was one that come back and visited, and he’s retired and lives in Houston, south Houston. He said they had ways of encouraging you to volunteer. He said, no one was mistreated. But he said the ones that didn’t volunteer, for breakfast they may have beans, and potatoes. For lunch, they may have potatoes and beans. And for dinner, they may have beans and potatoes. And he said two or three days of that, you know, and them looking at the others over there that have got meat and you know vegetables, and milk, and you know, some more things, he said some of them decided they might try to pick a little cotton. [laughter] And---and they were out, because once, I was going down one side of the bayou on our place, I think I was looking for the milk cow, and I heard the darnedest jabbering, and carrying on that you ever saw. It scared this little skinny boy. So I cut a trail for the house, but I got to a little clearing where I could see across, it was six Germans. A soldier was with them, and what they were doing on Crooked Bayou, they was looking for some cypress leaves. And some little things off of cypress trees, and they could find the particular type, and they cut them, and carry them in. Now, the Japanese did a lot of cypress ?makes?, they got the bark off of them, and polished them, and did---made some things and whatever. Because George Takei says one of his prize possessions is his father’s cypress ?makes? and it’s on his desk. So they did it, but I don’t remember any Japanese coming out to our place to get it, because that same (inaudible) bayou meandered around through where they had their truck patches, and then the break, and over on (inaudible) where they were---they had other places that they could get the needs, and why---why the Germans were on our side of the fence, you know, I don’t know. I mean it just---I wasn’t looking for them, but once I saw what it was, well I went home and found the cow. INTERVIEWER: And how much interaction did you actually personally have with any of the German POWs? ELLINGTON: Very few. Very little. On some of that, and maybe---some of them would be at the guardhouse there at the---with the soldiers. I learned a few words to cuss. But I’ve forgotten that. INTERVIEWER: How---how handy did that, that serve you? ELLINGTON: [laughter] It got my butt whipped in school one day. The teacher happened to understand German. [laughter] I forgot it after she got through with me. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 19 �INTERVIEWER: [laughter] What impact do you feel your life has had---because of the contact you had with those people during the war? ELLINGTON: If I---if I would say one thing, I believe that it reduced me being---and I’m going to use the term a bigot, or a racist, as much. Because I saw what was happening, and---and had a gourmet, listening to Daddy and the old man, and then Daddy reiterating some of it through the year, talking with other people when they’d---you know want to say something, want to know something about the camp. It got me to where you look at the person and what’s coming out, not what we look like. And---and I have tried to practice that to this day. When I meet a person, they’re either this or that. Now after I’ve been around them for a spell, I may put them in this category down here. Because I know all the language of the racist vernacular. And I hear a lot of it used a lot of times, and people are not being racist when they use it, but they certainly have heard it all their life, and to an extent we don’t know any better, because the relocation center there at Jerome, for years it was called the Jap camp. And it still, some reference is made to the Jap camp. And most of the people that use it are not using the term derogatorily. Because at that point in time, that was basically the only term, you know, that we need. And we’re a lazy people, in speaking. Now you take a southerner, if he can shorten a word, it’s shortened. I mean if we---we can leave a few syllables out, and if you want to see just how bad it is sometimes, in our language, read Jeff Foxworthy’s Southern Dictionary. Now you know, I hear that every day. Now we’re improving on it, but we do shorten words, and now some of the people use the term derogatorily. But the majority did not. And we have learned since then that it’s not a good term for the recipients of the word, so you---you know, most of us, we try our best not to use it. Now we may slip, but we---we---we try not to, and it---and some other of our racist words. And what I admire about the Japanese, more so than some of our other groups, is that they don’t use the term either in conversing with one another, or on television, or whatever. They’re not trying to make money using it, or doing something else. It---it, they use honorable terms, and don’t get into some of the other. INTERVIEWER: Looking back, what do you feel that was accomplished by these Japanese American soldiers that fought for the country in the war? ELLINGTON: Well, they---they helped win it. No question about it. Possibly it may have even helped shorten it in Europe, because they were some fighting demons. And they go for broke, feel it. Because---and how they could do it, I don’t know. Because as we’ve heard from some of the sessions, and all, that they---a lot of them’s parents was behind the barbed wire. And there, they were trying to prove, and did prove, the loyalty and everything else that should have never been in question. I--I think they played a big part. And if I’d had some kinfolks over there that they pulled out of the fire, I’d have thought more so. INTERVIEWER: I want to kind of, coming up to the close here, and ask you, out here, this property that you visited all this time, that your---your father was---used as his former hunting grounds. What happened to that property? ELLINGTON: You’re talking about the colony that I referred to, Deep Ellum colony. All right, after the war, I may have not mentioned back earlier, but there was some Caucasian families in there that got displaced, they had to This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 19 �move out so that it could be used for the Japanese farming, for the vegetables and whatever for the camp. And they raised enough that it pretty well took care of the camp, and helped to---some surplus was shipped to Camp Robinson, which was the Army (inaudible) in Little Rock. Some come back to that, and since that time, there are some people that held five acres and sold the rest. And---but there’s one family that they still own theirs, and the other, they still had all the---his 40, I believe he may have sold it recently, because he’s about four or five years older than I am. And he was the only one left, his other family moved. And the vast majority that will go back to (inaudible) and Seed Company owns it. (inaudible) Company, because they had the money and bought it. And Big Doc Russian had bought 60---160 acres back in the ’20s or the early ’30s. Because Daddy met him in the ’30s through hunting. And we had been together with them, descendants and everything, since. And they’re the ones, (inaudible) and Seed Company, it’s the one that owned the picture of the packet of seed, or rice, that the people that attended The Life Interrupted in Little Rock received. It had the seeds there on one side, and the monument of Jerome on the other side. INTERVIEWER: And the--ELLINGTON: And they own most of it. INTERVIEWER: The property of the camp itself? ELLINGTON: No, the property of the camp itself, a man by the name of Mr. Parker bought it when the war was over with. And he was an old oil man, had some restaurants, maybe a hotel, and was a gambler, and he’d won some money gambling, a pretty good sum, allegedly. And bought the camp, and then we bought it from him, because---so he liked Daddy, but Daddy didn’t lie to him. And he tried to give us some more land that he had, but we couldn’t take it, because at that point in time, we couldn’t have paid taxes. And we were under such tight allotment, like cotton and rice, that you couldn’t have planted anything on it but soybeans, and soybeans were a $1.80 cents a bushel then. And you couldn’t---you know by the time you tried to clear it and all, you couldn’t have made any money. And we couldn’t have held onto it. But Daddy had the first right of refusal on somebody that bought it. And Hadley Sydney bought a lot of it there, and some that was off, but filling in their block, they bought a lot of it. But then when he had the camp, and then behind the camp, we bought it to join the 160 that we had. So in behind, we farmed all of it, but there’s still 414 acres back there that we started off on, clearing, that a family that bought it after the war, and they bought most of the Jerome colony, particularly what was in Chico County. Two brothers. And they split, then one of them took what’s on the north side, and his descendants, they’re still the landlords, and we’ve been farming it since then, what, 53, how many years, and we haven’t had a contract since the first year, I think. And I---I don’t see it, the only time I see them generally is if I go up there to see them. INTERVIEWER: My last question for you is, why is it important for you to come to these reunions? ELLINGTON: Well, when---I started meeting some returnees in ’65. And since some years you come on up more so, and you know, I made some friends, and they invited me to ?Torrance? to a reunion, and I got out there, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 19 �and found out I was the dinner speaker. [laughter] In any case, Rishima gave me one of his drawing, you know, and then you know, come on with the summit, because---because the money had been put up for---by the Rockefeller Foundation for there, but you know, I enjoy seeing and meeting the old friends. And making new friends. And it’s surprising, I mean to hear this time that---how many have come up. You know, you don’t remember, but I met you, I was in Little Rock, or I was here, and you know, 90% of the time, we’ll get it there, I can remember them. But I can’t remember their names. I won’t remember their names time I walk out, because most of the time, I can’t pronounce them. Because I don’t hear them every day, and don’t use them every day. Because it took me several years to be able to get Kasherishima right. [laughter] Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing? ELLINGTON: No, I---I’ll probably think of a half a dozen things, or whatever. But you know still, I think we’re indebted as a country to the Japanese American soldiers, just as much as we were to the---I’ll use the term Caucasian soldiers, and we had black soldiers that did not get to do the fighting and whatever, but now that’s changed. But they did serve in the, you know transportation and other things. We owe them a debt. We had Latin American soldiers fight. We owe a tremendous debt, I think, particularly to the Navajos, who were the wind talkers. You know so yeah, you know, that, there’s a big place in our history and in our country for, and they have been extremely beneficial. As I’ve said earlier, on the educational level and the prison level, you know that’s commendable. I mean it’s just kind of like I met a Japanese American in 1961, in Dickinson, Texas. At a barber shop, because I was renting from the barber, and he was an Italian. And very Italian speaking, you know accent, because Dickinson was an Italian town pretty good, like---like village was at one time. And when the man got out of the chair, he was an older man, I asked him what camp was he in. He wasn’t in a camp. His father had come to that area and located some land and whatever, and went to Japan and got his family, and I think a few more, and they came, and he made his first rice crop in Webster, Texas, in 1906. And then later on, I went to Rice Tech---at Alvin, Texas, which is just right there, and the farming community they know everyone, and the Rice Tech was working on a hybrid rice, and that chocolate ball facility in the Rice Tech was owned by the prince if ?Lithenstein?. But when I went in, I’m going to use the term little Japanese, because to me was, you know, a little smaller, is sitting over there, so I bobbled over there and asked him what camp he was in. He was the son of the old man that I’d met at the barber shop. And he had retired from ?Nossur?. So, and when all the local farmers and stuff began coming in, well it’s just like any farming community. They knew everyone, you know the old home way. But they---they had never suffered any of the (inaudible) and I met another family too, when I was there in Dickinson teaching for a few years. See, but they weren’t on the west coast. INTERVIEWER: I’m going to wrap that up there. ELLINGTON: OK. INTERVIEWER: Say---well you know, one thing I do want to, I didn’t quite tell the truth here. I’m going to ask you to just state one last thing. What’s your occupation? What did you retire from? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 19 �ELLINGTON: Farming. I---I was a farmer. Well now, I taught school from one year in Wilson, Arkansas, and we---oh yeah, we had a Japanese family at Wilson. CREW MEMBER: (inaudible) INTERVIEWER: Oh. (inaudible) What occupation did you (inaudible) ELLINGTON: Well, I quit, I didn’t retire, because when you retire you’re supposed to get a check, I didn’t get a check, but the last---since 1982, I was a full-time farmer. Did some rice (inaudible) so they had work on the side. But then ’59 and ’60, I taught school in Wilson, Arkansas. And there was a Japanese family there. Because I had met one of the boys, he went to Arkansas State, and I went to Arkansas State. And so, I knew him, but---and we were friendly, but we wasn’t drinking companions and all that, because was a little better caliber than I was then. Now today I might do---I never did ask his mother and father what camp they were in. Because now we’re looking not that many years, now he had some sister and brother in school, exceptionally good students, and the mother and father were at all the school functions, the oldest daughter was a cheerleader, and well---I mean in---in the school, you really wouldn’t have needed---they weren’t any different. But also had a---a---I’m going to use the term Mexican or two, because that was the term, that was before Latino, or Latin American. But I mean they were Americans, but Spanish descent. And you know, there wasn’t any difference there. But I---I asked later on, and the ?Sanos? were not here during the war, they were in California. And there was some deal that they’d come there to farm, and they farmed soybeans a few years, and then went back to California. And so I---I---even teaching, I---and I taught to school, to 1977. And I quit. Because between some of the things that was happening, the discipline, some of the court cases, and everything else, I knew I’d better quit, or I’d be in serious trouble. Because I believed in discipline. And you know, I---I give a lot of leeway, but now in---we could be very reasonable, but now that third time, your ass was grass and I was the lawnmower. And it began to get some---you couldn’t do that anymore. And so then in 1980, I got on the Dermot, that’s the local school board, and of the next 25 years, I was on that 23. So I---I did have that other side of trying to deal with some---I’m going to call it retardation and---in education, and responsibility of parents and whatever. We had a lot of things changed. And it’s time for that pendulum to swing back. And my brother wanted to retire in 1982---’81, at the end of ’81. And he sold the place. Verbally, they---they kind of had an agreement, and when he kind of checked what Uncle Sam was going to do on capital gains or whatever, he had a change of heart. [laughter] And asked me would I rent it, and so I rented it and took over, and there was some swapping and whatever, and---on the equipment, and some more land that had been acquired, and then I bought Daddy’s half. And it was when he died, what little bit, you know what I owed him, that half was taken care of, so I’ve been farming it since 1982. INTERVIEWER: On that note, we’re going to wrap it up. ELLINGTON: OK. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 19 �INTERVIEWER: And I’m going to say thank you so much for on the fly, agreeing to interview with us, and enrich us with you know, your knowledge of---of what was going on in Jerome. Thank you again. END OF AUDIO FILE 2 This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 19 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Ellington oral history interview, July 5, 2008 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Ellington oral history interview transcript [full interview], July 5, 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ellington, John: narrator Horsting, Robert: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 19 pages, typescript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-07-05 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Denver, Colorado Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2008OH0890_T_Ellington