Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: George Yamada Interview
Narrator: George Yamada
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Spokane, Washington
Date: March 15 & 16, 2006
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_2-01-0031

My work was in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and one day in say a 24-hour to 48-hour period, I worked in five states. I think it was New York, Connecticut, I even ventured into New Hampshire to work up there, sexed up there. We were getting in the neighborhood of around one and a quarter cent per chick, one point quarter for a chick. In the smaller hatcheries, we were getting a nickel a chick, and we also sexed turkeys, turkey poults, and we got anywhere from a nickel to seven cents or a dime a poult, as I remember. And it was real decent money for what people in the country were making at that time.

MA: How many chicks could you sex in an hour, say?

GY: Well, the fastest I was able to go with a sustained speed was around 1,200 chicks an hour -- with accuracy, that's what's important.

[Interruption]

MA: Why do you think the Niseis were so adept at chick sexing?

GY: I think it could be that it was good money, of course. It was a fascinating career, I thought, to be able to travel, only Orientals were in it at that point, good money, and maybe for those people that, you know, it was a better-paying job than being a laborer or whatever else, a farmer, say, for instance. It was just sort of a fascination for me. I can't speak for all the rest, but for me it was traveling, living in a different part of the country.

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