Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/693/

Description of the process of chick sexing

It was a matter of squeezing the chick to get the egg yolk out, the egg yolk that they lived on after they hatched. It would be eighteen days in the incubator, and three days in the hatching compartment. And in order for the chick to look nice and yellow and bright, they have to use formaldehyde mixed in some other charcoal. And when you walked in when the formaldehyde was not only for keeping it germ-free, but it also turned the white chicken yellowish color. There's something about a pure white chicken that didn't look just right, however, a little baby chicken, one day old, that had a yellow color, fluffed out, looked a lot better to the buying public, apparently. And oh, I'm not sure how long it took for us to be adept at it, but we, with our thumb and forefinger on the left hand, we opened the vent, identified on the rim whether it was male or female, and sexed, that's what sexing was about.


chick sexing

Date: March 15 & 16, 2006

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Megan Asaka

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Nisei male. Born 1923 in Spokane, Washington. Spent childhood in downtown Spokane where parents ran the World Hotel. Father also worked as a mail handler for the Great Northern Railroad. Attended Lewis and Clark High School and Washington State University. During the war remembers seeing train cars pass through Spokane with Japanese Americans headed to Heart Mountain incarceration camp, Wyoming. Drafted into the army in 1944 and served at the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Fort Snelling, Minnesota and Presidio, California. After World War II, worked as a chick sexer in upstate New York and surrounding region for thirty years. Returned to Spokane in the mid-1970s and pursued a career in real estate. Currently lives with wife, Susie, in Spokane and is an active fly fisherman. (March 16, 2006 )