<Begin Segment 42>

TI: But what I now want to go into, earlier you talked about, as a supply officer, you talked about how you didn't have to go through the main gate, that you had another way?

FS: No, that was the mess hall, I was foreman of the mess hall, Aussie mess hall.

TI: But I'm wondering, when you were working with the military, you controlled lots of supplies. And during the war, there was a active black market.

FS: Yeah, yeah.

TI: And I wanted to get your thoughts about...

FS: Black market?

TI: ...about the black market. What was happening?

FS: Initially, in Japan at first, it was small, what you carry on your back. That was everybody. But don't forget now, you got a thousand people doing, you could fill a freight car. But everybody was doing it. Food for clothes, clothes for food, whatever the demand, food and clothes. But I think food and food was the commodity. Rice for potato, rice for daikon. Because you can't eat rice alone, so you have to, rice for eggs. And then if you have rice, you got that choice. I give you so many eggs for so much rice. That's tops.

TI: So what you're talking about, it's really a barter system. So that one group had more of something than the other, so they would trade their surplus to get something else.

FS: Yeah.

TI: And so that's how initially it started.

FS: Right. So if a person was, for instance, when I was in supply work, I had a big truck. So I figured, I got a lot of people working for me, and they all work hard. They get nothing for it. Money can't buy 'em nothing. They're all former navy people, army, high people, captains. And I'm a nothing. I'm this, but they all respect me because I'm the boss. I'm their leader, so I got to do something. I thought about one good thing one day. In Hiro, there's a lot of dry fish. People, they dry fish because it's preserved better, right? And salt, there's a lot of people make salt on the sea. But if you get the salt and fish and you bring it hundred miles in, there's a gold mine of rice there. Why doesn't that rice come here? One thing, no transportation. The transportation system was screwed up during the war, and I figured this out. Why doesn't the iriko or surume go to inaka? There's no train, there's no truck, shortage. If I was to get the fish and bring it to there, could I get the rice? I tried a dry run. I only got a jeep full, enough for a jeep. That place, inaka, that sonchou, big shot, mura, "Oh, I got lot of rice. How many rice you want for this surume?" Said, "How much you gonna give me?" We've got to do exchange now. He said, "I could give you x amount of rice, tawara," big, you know, this, for so much fish. I figure, I'm getting the best of the trade. So I said, "Okay, done." But I said, "Next time I come, I'm going to bring more with a bigger truck, and can you handle it?" He said, "Oh, yeah, I got ippai kome aru." So next week I got money, I even got the workers to pool the money and took out how much they contribute. Got all the money and went and bought the fish, dried fish. Man, I got a lot of fish. The GI truck was six by... and it's a two-ton truck. The back was loaded up with dry fish, and had to get a canvas cover. And I had a GI driver. So he was part of my -- I had to explain to him what I was doing. He said, "Frank, it's an adventure. Let's do it. Let's see what happens. It's interesting." About two or three helpers, they were riding in the back, I was in the front, there was six of us. See, we didn't want to get waylaid. There's gangs out there trying to swipe things. So safe that way. Drive to another village, a bigger village, I heard they wanted fish bad. And they needed salt bad. So we had the two items, so we went there, went to see the big shot of the mura, and they gave us... you know, I end up with almost two third of the six by, rice. That was a lot of rice. Brought all that rice back to the supply warehouse. I couldn't bring it nowhere else, I didn't know where to dump it. So we had the warehouse, and put it all in the warehouse.

And then it was toward night, so I told the big honcho head of Navy, captain, he's a colonel, he was my boss, Japanese boss. I told him, I said, "We're gonna start, tomorrow morning we're gonna divide it. I want everybody to bring their itomasu, it's a container of certain size. You tell 'em." And I think we got enough rice that we can make it nitomasu, bring two." So he told 'em. So they came next door, nitomasu, two, and we cut the bag open. Jesus Christ, didn't even make a dent, there was so much rice. So I says, "All right, now what? I tell you what." I told this one guy, "Go down to so and so in the town, and they have some kind of a bag I saw. Some kind of bag." So they got a whole bunch of that bag, and then put all the nittou of rice in each bag, and then put all the nittou of rice in each bag. So this is the bag you take home. "Now," I said, "I want each guy, nittou of rice that you're going to take home, and you're going to sell that. This is for you to eat, you sell this, bring the money back. Here." So they're salesmen now. I sold every bit of that rice. Man, there was a big demand. Next town, I sold it, in the big town, Kure. I didn't sell it in my town, I might get caught. But just to be safe, I greased the police, gave 'em rice. I gave one guy, a real bad guy, he was my buddy, too. He was the head of the, he was the inspector, but he was more or less in charge of the whole police station. Even the chief of police was scared of him, very intimidating person, see. But, so I gave him the rice, and he greased everybody. So now, he says, "If you get caught, just mention my name. Other police can't do nothing." I never got caught, though. So that nittou, they work the next night, they brought that home, you know, they all profit for that rice. They're eating better, and then the one they had left for themselves, they were even selling part of that. Because they saw all that rice in the warehouse, and they count their blessings. Each guy was praying they get more of that rice from me. So I kind of read their minds, so I gave 'em the rice. And I sold quite a bit myself. They were selling it for me.

TI: And then for that one, that one sort of truckload, how much money would you make off that?

FS: Gee, I don't know. I didn't sell for money, I was bartering and I was getting loyalty out of the workers.

TI: Okay, so this was like buying goodwill.

FS: Yeah. You know, I never had a greed. You know, if I had greed, I'd have been a rich son of a gun.

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.