<Begin Segment 39>

TI: So how long were you at this job?

FS: I was there until I went to work for the military government. That was about five months later. [Laughs]

TI: So let's move on to that, 'cause I went to get to that. So you went from now this mess hall...

FS: So I heard about this military government wanting a supply officer, assistant to do supply work. And I heard that, I wanted to work for American anyway, you know. Aussie is American, but they're different. And why should I work for Aussie when there's American working? You know, they talk my language. So I got a job with them. So I became a supply, big honcho, they call it head. And I had an officer, a major, do only the paperwork. He signed the return and issue paper, you know, return and issue, and inventory and all that. I did ninety-nine percent of the work. And the colonel told me, colonel got me the job, interviewed me. And he says, "There's another job you got, too, not only supplies. You've got to do all the requisition work for the team." Shimane, Tottori, Okayama, Yamaguchi, and Hiroshima, there's five ken that have sub, smaller military government, each one. Hiroshima was the biggest, Chugoku, it was head of the whole region. So I have to supply the team, plus the CIC, each one. And then, later, six months later, atomic bomb, ABCC came. Atomic Bomb Casualty investigation of the experiment, atomic bomb. So I had to take care of them, too, supply. Furnish them domestic supply, I mean, bed sheets, blanket, dishes, because we had to furnish all that. We didn't take Japanese stuff. We're not stealers, we furnish our own. No, this is MacArthur's way of doing it. He didn't salvage the country, we came like, I mean, I say "we," but we came with everything we need. We didn't even take the Japanese food. Yeah. It was against MacArthur's rule, you cannot eat Japanese food.

TI: Oh, I didn't know that. So that was a policy so that it wouldn't take away from the Japanese people, that he wanted to, in fact, probably brought extra.

FS: Right, leave 'em alone. See, so MacArthur had a hell of a record. And then I had to furnish the team, every location.

TI: And so roughly how many people are we talking about? When you say all these teams and all these different areas?

FS: Oh, well, each military government, I had four ladies working for me doing all the clerk. I had three GIs helping me full time.

TI: But in terms of supplying, how many, like hundreds, for hundreds of people, thousands of people?

FS: Oh, yeah. Each team had maybe fifty, sixty people.

TI: So hundreds of people you were supplying.

FS: Oh, yeah, there were five places. Even Hiroshima had a team. And Chugoku military government region was the headquarter for all of 'em. See, get the picture? So it was split in five. So I was running the whole five and the team, you know, in the headquarters. And then, later on, colonel says, "Hey, Frank, I got a, I got a problem. I can't get nobody to pick up the enlisted men's food ration." I said, "From where?" He said, "Well, there's a train, food train coming in from Kobe once a week. And then the order today, I give 'em Friday, we pick it up next Friday. And the Friday order is for next Friday." You know what I mean? It goes like this. "So I want somebody to take care of that." He didn't tell me officer's club and officer's mess, he later, after I went out, and, "Oh, Frank, come here, come back here. Since you took that enlisted men, I want you to do the officer's club and mess hall, too. It's small." It was just as big. So now I got the supply work for the team, and then later on the ABCC came. I got all this work. I couldn't do it, not even twenty hours a day, but I managed. You know the old saying, you got a ball of twine, and you want to get the, it's all knotted up, just get one piece at a time and clip, and pretty soon you solve that. That's what I did. One situation at a time. So then what you do, you get a person that you can more or less manage to run that for you. Colonel want me to run it, but I got somebody else to do it, some Japanese people, smart. I don't care if they're male or female. That took care of that. Then he, colonel came in my office one day, "Where's Frank?" Lady said, "I don't know, he probably went downstairs for something." "For what? Every time I come nearby his office, he's gone." He's yelling for me all over the building, four-story, yelling, "Frank, goddamn, where in the hell are you?" He know that Japanese don't speak English, so they don't understand. So he's using cussing words and everything. Can't find me, I'm fooling around. You get people to do your job, and then you look around, three or four days, everything's going good. No good, get somebody else. You set the policy, don't tell 'em how to do it. You figure that if they're smart enough that you got 'em that job, they should be able to handle it. The only thing you have to do is set the policy, what you want done pertaining to the work only, not how to do it. And leave 'em alone, and it works. Japanese, Chinese, I don't care who it is, it works. I had women doing men's job, you know what I mean. That's when I met my girlfriend, and she was starting to do a lot of things. She was almost like a shadow. Every time I look for her, I don't know where she is, then she's behind me waiting for orders.

<End Segment 39> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.