<Begin Segment 18>

MA: So in Puyallup, how did you, what was your daily life like? I mean, how did you occupy your time?

GM: [Laughs] First of all, I don't know if people talk about it, but you know, you have to eat. So there's always a battle trying to get your food. Getting in line, and you don't want to be the last one in line because there might not be any food left. That was one, the other was how to occupy your time. People who liked to read, read books and stuff, that's okay, but for me, as a seventeen-year-old kid, I'm anxious for some kind of activity. And it, it was kind of tough trying to figure out what to do. I used to knock out knots out of the buildings just for the fun of it. And you know, those barracks were just, didn't have any tarpaper or anything on it. When the hot summer months came along, all the wood dried up and all the knots got loose and we used to knock 'em out and watch people stuff paper in those holes and peek into people's rooms, because the, the wood would separate and they would caulk it up with newspaper. Although there was enough, there was enough things to do, but the, not being much time for you to do the things you want to do. I used to go back and talk to the soldier guarding the back, back part of the camp.

MA: Oh, really?

GM: And I used to talk to 'em and asked them if they were born in this country, and tell 'em, "Well, that makes you an American citizen." Then you tell 'em, "Well, I was born in this country, too. I'm an American citizen," and put a confusion in their mind, because a lot of these soldiers were regular army, and they didn't have any education at all. A lot of 'em were so dumb, they, it's a wonder they even got in the army. And...

MA: Did they understand what was going on with the...?

GM: A lot of 'em didn't. But after a while, talking to them and everything, they started to understand more. Then the, towards the, after a few months of that, their soldiers were talking about, "Now, you got a brother in the army, and how come you're in the camp here?" and stuff like that. And you explain to 'em easily that, "Well, because I got Japanese blood in me." And it got to a point where they were very sympathetic for, for the cause there, for us as far as being there. So they didn't really treat us bad. There couldn't be too many bad things you could do to treat us bad, although my first week in camp I got beat up.

MA: You got beat up?

GM: Yeah, I got beat up the first, first week in camp by the chief of police. And I didn't do anything wrong; I was sitting close to the fence waving to my friends passing by -- there was about four or five other kids, you know, the end barrack facing the road -- and this guy comes along, somebody that didn't have a badge or anything like that. He comes over and he says, "Hey, you kids," he says, "get the hell out of there." And everybody got up just like somebody taking orders. I just sat there and I looked up at the guy and I says, "Who are you?" And he picked me up and beat the hell out of me. Boy, he, I don't know how many times he hit me, but, but Hippo Sakahara, you know, the Sakahara insurance? He's dead now, but, was from Fife. And he came along and he told the guy, he says, "Put that kid down or I'll kill you." And he dropped me -- [laughs] -- and walked away.

MA: Do you ever know why he picked on you in that way?

GM: Well, I guess I shouldn't have said, "Who are you?" He says, "I'm the chief of police here." And, and the thing that I should have got very bitter about this whole incident, but I didn't at that time, because this guy was a Japanese, too. He was working in the camp as the chief of police. And I was so mad because I was Japanese, he was Japanese, and said, "What are you doing to me?" You know, you're my enemy, in a sense. And since I wasn't doing anything wrong, it was worse.

MA: Did, this is still in Puyallup?

GM: This was still at Puyallup, yeah.

MA: Did you notice any other tension among the, the people in camp?

GM: Not really, although they kept a pretty good life in there where they didn't cause any trouble. I know I did some things wrong in camp that I didn't get caught at. [Laughs] One of 'em was -- I gotta tell you this one -- I got hungry. Two of us got hungry, and we decided to sneak into the mess hall and find something to eat. And we crawled through this hole and got inside, in the mess hall and couldn't find anything to eat, except there was two Coke bottles, two bottles of Coke along the wall. And I said, "Oh boy, that's nice." We took the two Coke bottles, and there was a couple empty ones there, too, so we filled it up with a little shoyu and water and put the cap back on and replaced it with these two bottles of Coke. And so we got out of there with the Coke, and we decided to drink the Coke and took a swig of that and it was awful. And so I said, "Oh, that's bad." He said, "Throw it away." So we threw it away. What it was -- I didn't know what it was until the next day, really. The next day, I saw a real good fight between two of the cooks. And one of the cooks took this other guy and threw him in this children's wading pond, headfirst. And he said, "That's what you get for stealing my wine." [Laughs] And I said, "Oh," I said, "let's get out of here." He, it was wine that we stole, that they were making in the kitchen.

MA: Did they ever figure out it was you?

GM: They never figured that one out, he would have really beat me up. I don't know who the cooks were, but that's the last time I snuck into that place. But I don't know if that's wrong, just sneaking into the kitchen because you wanted something to eat, but part of the fun I had.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.