<Begin Segment 22>

MN: Now, I know you folks were all private first class. It was difficult to make ends meet financially, especially 'cause you were sending money to your parents. Tell me some of the creative ways you guys were saving money.

BK: Well, as a private, you're making less than seventy-five dollars a month. I don't know if we were making even that, but part of it was for support of your parents and insurance and whatever, and whatever we got was very nominal at the end of the month. And so we were always broke, all of us. I mean, we were privates. The privates is the lowest scale in the army, and they hadn't designated us as, for promotion yet, so a lot of us were always short of money. And there were some people from Hawaii, they didn't have the same problems we had, like being in camp, so their parents were out doing what they normally do, doing business, growing crops, tomatoes, coffee, whatever, and they always had money. And they said, "Well, if you want to borrow money," they said, "we'll loan you five dollars, but at the end of the month you owe me ten." That's how it was in the army. And if you wanted to gamble you gambled and hopefully make it up. But a lot of us had to wash our clothes with the money that we earned. There was a Bendix machine that took these (streetcar) coins, and these coins were (...) three for a quarter or (...) we could use the (streetcar coins in the) laundromat and we'd wash our clothes. Well, the ride to town was one coin, and so if we used the coins, we'd get three for the Bendix machine, and we could use the same coin to go all the way to camp and back. We'd use one coin a piece, we'd still have one coin extra, so that's the way that we saved some money. And the poor Bendix operator, he wound up with a lot of tokens, not real money, but tokens. But I guess he understood what everything was all about. If you wanted to gamble and borrow more money you could, but it cost you a lot of money. Yeah. That's the army way.

MN: Do you want to share about being a pin setter?

BK: A (pin setter)?

MN: Pin, bowling pin setter?

BK: Oh, I told you about Watanabe, huh? Yeah, this fellow from Utah, Kinji Watanabe, and I became fast friends, and so he was in a different class than I was, but he was in a different company also, but we got to know each other and he says, "Let's go to town. I says, "Well, I can't afford it." I says, "I don't have any money to spend." I just got my clothes... we had to keep our clothes, uniforms, the cleaners, you had to pay the cleaners. I says, "I don't have any money." He says, "Don't worry. We'll go down and we're gonna make money." So he knew something I didn't know, so we went to town and got off the street car, and he says, "Let's go up the second floor, there's a bowling alley." And so we went to the bowling alley, he says, "We're gonna set pins and we're gonna get, make some money for chop suey." I says, "Well, I have never set up pins." He says, "Don't worry." So he goes to talk to the fellow in charge of the bowling alley and they need pin setters, so we go to the back and he says, "You watch me." "While the people are bowling," he says, "after they bowl, I'll put the rack up and then all the pins are ready for the bowler. After he bowls, he knocks down the pins, you pick up the pins and put them where they belong. And (the bowling person) gets the ball (...). He get another chance at knocking the pins down. After the second (throw, the) pins are knocked down (then) you set them up and (rack them). And then he tries again, and keep repeating it." And so I follow what he tells me to do, and after the bowlers bowl about three, four games they quit, so after they quit he says, "You wait. Usually they send money down the alley." I says, "They do?" I says, "That's nice." But sure enough they send a quarter down the alley, and so after the customers leave we go up to the head desk and the guy says, "Well, how many sets did you have?" and then he pays us for setting up the pins. We take that money and our tip and we went to (eat at) John's Chinese restaurant on the second floor, and that's where they serve some good Chinese food. And we ate our fill and we went home, really tired on this trolley but very happy. So that's how Kinji taught me how to make money at the bowling alley.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.