<Begin Segment 38>

TI: And so how long did you work with the fire marshal?

FS: Four months.

TI: And then what happened after that?

FS: I had a better job offer.

TI: So talk about that, what was the better job offer?

FS: It was in the next town, Hiro. Hiromachi. And I was, I had a job offer -- oh, somebody told me there was a job there, and they need somebody to speak English and Japanese to run the kitchen, so they couldn't find nobody. And the GIs, obviously the GIs were having a hard time, communication. So I went to look at it, and then there was an Aussie master sergeant, big shot. And he says, "You know anything about food?" I said, "Yeah," I said, "what do you want to know?" I said, "I know how to make mayonnaise." He said, "What? Mayonnaise?" "Yeah. I know how to make soup, how to make roast, how to make French dressing." See, the Aussies eat the same thing Americans, just about. He said, "You know all that?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "You want me to show you? I could do it." And I still know, I was out of camp, Japan, '46. So he said, "No, I know. What you put, ingredients?" So I told him what I put in the mayonnaise, you know, all the oil and mustard, this and that. And he said, "Okay." He says, "So you worked in a restaurant, your dad had a restaurant?" "Yeah." He said, "You know, you're the right man. You might take my job." But he says, "You know how to run people?" I said, "I don't think I have any problem." Said, "I got nothing but women working, no men." Because there was no men in Japan, they all went to service. Only young boys and old men, in between are gone, so all women working in the kitchen. Chatterbox, man. So he says, "I'll tell you what, I'll try to get you the top pay, you're going to be the foreman of the kitchen, you're gonna be the boss, you're gonna be right under me. You answer to nobody except me. I don't care if that corporal tell you something, no, no. You don't listen. You answer to me." Two corporal and a master sergeant. So we all three got along real good. So I was running the kitchen, making arrangements, how to put the, this food first. So GI, we have to feed the GI on the plate, army style. No tables. And then, let's see. I don't know how many soldiers we fed, but there were a lot of soldiers. Because we had big personnel.

And you know, there's a bit steam vat, pressure cooker. Aussies didn't know what that was. But when I was in Santa Fe, this head cook was telling me about a pressure cooker he had in his tavern. What he did was buy the cheapest meat possible, steam cook it. Make the gravy and cook the meat the same time, throw onion, everything in there. Comes out beautiful like a post roast dinner. And the meat, you can just flake it off. And I knew about that. And they didn't, Aussie didn't use that because they didn't know how to use it. Japanese use it to cook rice. It was a Japanese naval base headquarters. They feed hundreds of sailors, so they had the big kama, pressure cooker. I used that pressure, Aussie had the worst meat in the market. Toughest meat, and they called that the prime steak. You couldn't even cut it with a knife, it was so hard. But steak and egg was a prime, like a filet minon, or, you know what I mean, best food we had. So I used that pressure cooker and put all the dehydrated onions and potato, squash, everything in there, and put some water. Then we steam cooked that. And you should have seen what came out. The damn GIs were eating that thing up, there was nothing left for my Japanese help. The GIs came for seconds and thirds. And the mess sergeant said, "Frank, you did it. You did it, you started it, now you're gonna have to finish it. That's expected of you from here on." So I told the sergeant, I said, "You don't have enough dehydrated potato and onion, because that takes a lot."That's no problem. I'll get it. There's a lot of other mess halls, they can't use it." So he went and got all that. After that, oh, you should have seen all the GIs. Whenever we had that meal -- we didn't have it every day, like once or twice a week. And then they know somehow, we didn't tell 'em what date, the GIs were lined up. And then my help, I used to feed my help first. I feed the help, sergeant says, "We don't do that." I said, "Well, sergeant, if we don't feed the help first, there won't be nothing left." And I told the sergeant, said, "You know, my dad had an expression. He always told me, 'Never forget. You don't charge the people that worked in the kitchen food money. The food comes with the job, free.' And he always told me, 'Don't forget it.'" So I said, "Sergeant, that's the way I'm going to do this mess hall. I'm not going to let them eat the junk. They're going to get top." So I used to let all the women eat first. They don't eat much, anyway, you know, not like men. And after we were working in the mess hall day after day, even in Japan, shortage, they can't eat that much. The smell defeated them. So all the help were eating all the good stuff first, boy, they're all robust and fat, now they're feeding the GIs. I think we made sure that it went one round. And then the mess sergeant said, "Well, we've got leftover, seconds." So the guys come for seconds. Some guys come for thirds. Them Aussies can eat. They're all slender and tall, but oh boy, they can pack it in. You know, we had to scrape all the juice off that thing and put it in the dishpan, so the help was using that to put in bread, soaking it with gravy. And that worked better than the meat. God, it was good food.

TI: That's a good story.

FS: I made an impression. The mess sergeant, he said, "Frank," he says, "you don't have to do no work, but what you did, I didn't even know about those things. In Aussie, we don't have those things."

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.