Strongest Wartime Memories

Yosh played baseball in Grand Forks with a mixed team including Doukhobors. They travelled as far as Midway and into the U.S. They couldn’t go to Vancouver, but they could cross the border and play in Spokane.

Yosh didn’t have much free time and spent most of his time working. While working in Carmi, everyone would be recruited to fight forest fires. A truck would drive up and everyone would be expected to drop everything and hop into the truck. Sometimes they would be dropped in the middle of nowhere and have to walk for a day to get to the fire. If lucky, they would have been able to fill their pockets with canned food because they were not guaranteed they would be fed.

When I was working in Carmi, they didn’t even let you go to your house [to get tools to fight the fire or anything to eat]. You had no choice about that.

Everybody had to go. And we just hoped that they would come and bring us some food. The first time I went, three days. We got nothing to eat. It’s what we put in our pockets when we went.

They slept on the ground and sometimes covered themselves with warm ashes.

It’s high up there. There’s frost every night.

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