<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So let's, let's go back to your job. Now you're at the motor pool and you're greasing the vehicles, and so describe the process. So after you grease a vehicle, what, what would happen next? What would you have to do after you finished greasing a vehicle, in terms of, like, paperwork? Did you have to do anything --

FS: No, I didn't do the paperwork. My, the guy on the block, he was one of the, he was a foreman for that place, so that's how I got my job, through him. So he does all the paperwork.

TI: But then, after you finish working on a vehicle, a particular one, did you have to sign off that you, you worked on that car or that truck?

FS: Well, when you go pick up the truck to grease it up you had to sign off, sign in, sign for the truck to take it out.

TI: And the reason I'm asking this is, I think it's because of, your name was on one of these documents that you were kind of picked up or selected as, as a potential troublemaker, and so that's why I want to, to sort of establish that. So you're working on the trucks, you have to sign out for the trucks and, I guess, sign 'em back in, and there was a particular truck, or a vehicle that you worked on that, I guess, was used later on for something. Can you describe some of that? Do you know what I'm talking about, kind of?

FS: Yeah, I think I know what you're saying. When I did, when I did sign off for the truck, and that day, the time they had the riots, people, people would go to the administration building to be able to go in and hit the guys or something, and there was, there was a bunch of gangs anyway. And when they, so when they, we then brought the truck out, maybe they didn't sign... that person had to sign out, they couldn't do it because they were, they took the truck out already. So I think that night already the guys, we left, we already left already when they, when they started the riot. We left and we were eating in the mess hall.

TI: So you had left the motor pool and you were...

FS: Yeah, we left the motor pool and we were eating in the mess hall. And the guys that was in the motor pool, the guy that's, what do you call, taking care of all the paperwork, they were, the MP came in, told him to get the heck out of here, all had their guns, right? So they all, they all had to take off. They say when they took off and went out they got shot at, and so they said they all ducked. They all, on the ground. They ducked and then went through the warehouse so they won't get shot through there, and then they finally end up where we were eating. They said, "We got just shot at," so we better all get out of here. So that's when we all left, left the mess hall to go back to our own block.

TI: And, and I'm trying to understand the reason. The reason was during this disturbance, or riot, that vehicles were used in that disturbance against the administration, so the MPs wanted to find out who actually, I guess, was using the trucks, and so that's why they went to the motor pool and they wanted everyone to leave and actually shot at people to get 'em out?

FS: Yeah.

TI: Okay. And then what happened? So you, you leave the mess hall, you go back to your barracks, and then what happened?

FS: So next morning, next morning the MP came through, started from one end of the camp, picking up everybody, and I was, that's when I was picked up and thrown in the stockade with all the people, quite a bit of, quite a bit of people that time.

TI: So before we go to the stockade, I just want to talk a little bit, up to this point, where you involved with groups like the Hoshidan or anything like that?

FS: No, I wasn't. Our whole block wasn't nothin' to do with the Hoshidan, because they're the one that used to wake us up five o'clock in the morning, blowing the bugle and running around the camp. We couldn't stand that. We were getting tired of it.

TI: And so there were these more pro-Japan groups like Hoshidan, but you, but you and other people in your block weren't involved?

FS: No, nothing, nothing out of our block. Nobody.

TI: And so there's really no reason, sort of political reasons or anything, for you to have been picked up other than your name was just probably on some document, and so they suspected that perhaps you were the one who took the truck out or something?

FS: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.