Japanese in Utah

This is a picture of the smelter camp in Midvale, Utah (a smelting town some 12 miles southwest of Salt Lake City) where we moved in the early 1920's after the boom wore off in Tooele. My father was again a camp "boss" and worked for the United States Smelting and Refining Co. for nearly 30 years. He lost his job when the war broke out and he was interned. He went back to the smelter for a short time and worked until his death in 1948. This camp as I recall was not an all-Japanese as the Tooele Camp had been; in fact, there were only a handful of Isseis (four including my father when WWII started) living here and there quite a number of Greek single men as well as a Mexican family -- quite cosmopolitan. However since my father spoke English fluently, he was in charge of the camp -- collected the rent for the smelter ($1.50 monthly with electricity free and it was turned on at dusk and off at dawn. There was no central heating and the large frame house with the three chimneys where we lived was the only house with culinary water. The others had to get their water for bathing and cooking from the waterhouse. We got our house free as part of the services rendered by my father for the smelter. We occupied only the lower floor. Our house was frame and Dad had the smelter construct a Japanese "ofuro" for the Japanese residents and it was a real luxury for us. He even had a shower installed so that we could wash first before getting into the huge wooden tub. It was part of our chores to keep the furnace going so that there would be plenty of hot water when the men returned from work. The rest of the smelter residents lived in the barrack-type building (made of brick) and the Mexican family got three rooms with a door connecting the rooms. I recall they had 7 or 8 children.