Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Charles Oihe Hamasaki Interview
Narrator: Charles Oihe Hamasaki
Interviewers: Martha Nakagawa (primary); Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Culver City, California
Date: February 24, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-hcharles-01-0021

<Begin Segment 21>

MN: Well, we talked a little bit about what you did at Bismarck. What kind of sports activities did they have?

CH: Well, you know, Issei, they like sumo. They organized a sumo from each different group. I was a champion, 'cause they're all too old. [Laughs] You know, too old. But there was a couple guys from Guadalupe, California, Santa Monica, California, younger guys. But young, they were thirty-five years old. They were in their prime. They were better than me, of course. I was nineteen. They were more, you know, built than I was. And of course we played baseball against the Germans, but Germans, they're all young guys. You know, seamen, merchant marines, all those guys. All younger. That's why they beat us, but we didn't, good time. And that's why we had, once a week we had movie. And we all the, we had a hall. Get together and have a movie. And that's why all the Terminal Island people, they were free. Other people, "Five cents please." With the five cent, I pocketed. They don't know different.

TI: Now, where would people have, get money, though? How could they pay you?

CH: Oh, they had money. Yeah, they had money. I don't know where they got it, but I know I didn't have no money. They had money. They had money to gamble, so they must have had, brought money. 'Course, I wasn't interested that kind of thing. I didn't even think about that kind of thing. Right now, see, you think about it, but when you're young, you don't think about those things, "You have money or what?" That's what...

TI: And what could you do with the money? If you had money...

CH: Yeah, see, they didn't have no PX. Well, even if you have money, you can't buy nothing. That's why they gambled. And that's where I learned how to play ping pong. There were a lot of ping pong crazy people. And you know my next block, every time... see, I used to deliver the mail and I used to have the mess call, I called from time to eat or everything. I was the, I used to do everything in the camp, 'cause I was the youngest one. So I go to one next-next barrack, every time I go, letter for this and that, then I look inside there, there's always a certain kind of group in there. So I wondered what, they're always talking about something. So I asked the guys, "Hey, what are those guys talking about?" "Those are Japanese government people," they told me. You know, Japanese government, they talk about something. You're not allowed to join them. Japanese government, you know what, they were the first ones to get shipped out on the Gripsholm. You know that ship Gripsholm? They were the first one, they took 'em out. And one was Prince Matsudaira. He liked ping pong. I learned ping pong from him. He told me, "What you doing here?" "I'm American citizen, they made a mistake." Matsudaira. I still remember that guy, Prince Matsudaira.

TI: But he taught you how to play ping pong.

CH: Yeah.

TI: Was he, how old was he?

CH: He must be about forty years old, around there someplace, thirty-five, forty.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.