<Begin Segment 21>

YM: So anyway, I went there and I don't know how long I was there, but then there's a Mr. Max Franzen and his wife Ellen, they ran the Cleveland hostel, and Max --

SY: The hostel that you originally...

YM: That we originally went to. And the hostel was a really nice gathering place where people would come, especially weekends if they had lived there at one time, or even if they hadn't. It was a meeting place, and we played bridge and chatted, and some people made their, met their dates or something there or something like, it was very active during the early days. It was a lot of fun. And anyway, by 1944 -- all the young people came out first and later on they start having families come out, with children, so it wasn't quite like the very first groups of people that were there. Anyway, Mr. Franzen came up to me and he said he wanted somebody to do the cooking at this hostel because they lost, whoever must've left, so I pondered about it and he said, "Oh, come on," he sat me down, he talked to me, "Come on, Yasu, we need you." So I got talked into it and I went to work at the hostel for one year, and we closed the hostel in 1945 so I was there for the last year.

SY: You, were you one of several cooks?

YM: No, no, I was the only cook, but it's not that difficult because the, I don't have to make the menu or the shopping or anything, just do the cooking. So whatever they said is on the menu tonight and they had all the ingredients there, then I would cook.

[Interruption]

YM: So anyway, Mr. Franzen and his wife were, they're hired by, I don't know what is this, part of the War Relocation? I'm not sure.

SY: I see.

YM: But the hostel itself is, was sponsored by Quakers, and I think a lot of the hostels were sponsored by Quakers. And I don't know what the, how the system worked, but they were employees of, maybe WRA. I'm not quite sure. Could be.

SY: Yeah.

YM: 'Cause it was a place where people could go to before they hit their city, get acclimated.

SY: So do you have, by this time, by the last year, there were quite a few families.

YM: Yeah, they were, well, like a couple with two children or whatever.

SY: And so did you cook mainly, was it Japanese, all Japanese, right?

YM: No. No Japanese food. All...

SY: American food.

YM: Uh-huh, American food. Once, once I said, "Let's have some chow mein," so I made little patties of noodles, was egg noodle or something, individual patties instead of making a big sheet, and put the vegetables and little pork on it. But the hostel, Saturday nights were their treat kind of a thing and they used to get the best pork chops, for making teriyaki in the oven, in the, because it's a mass of -- and it was delicious. And the butchers, they got to know the organization, I guess, so they would put away stuff for us, and these pork chops, I don't know what, it's a blade cutter, something, they were beautiful. And that was a treat, really, one of the best meals they served there.

SY: So whatever they bought, whatever food they bought, you would cook it then.

YM: Yeah. Right, exactly. So they, they'd pin up a menu 'cause they've already...

SY: Bought the food.

YM: Bought whatever they need to do, and so I just followed whatever was for the day. Except dessert or something, I just made whatever was available or whatever. They didn't tell me what to make for dessert, but I used to come down after lunch and make dessert.

SY: So this sounds like kind of a hard job. Was it hard? Was it hard, difficult work?

YM: Well, I remember we had a skillet, a cast iron skillet. It must've been, I don't know, largest -- it's this big.

SY: Carrying it was hard.

YM: And the pot of rice, we used to make rice and it was an aluminum, thin aluminum pot. They didn't have a heavy pot. We had to put a -- you know they had this food grinder that you latch onto the edge of something and you grind it? -- we used to put that on top of the lid of the rice thing. Otherwise the lid would just pop off 'cause it was such a lightweight, and it would always come out with a shell of rice all stuck on the side because it's burnt like, I don't know how to describe it. You always had the waste. It was just terrible, but we used to make rice. [Laughs]

SY: Because the supplies weren't very good.

YM: Yeah, we didn't have the best equipment, utensils. We did with what we had.

SY: Right.

YM: But I remember, what was it I used to make in this big skillet? Maybe it was fried rice or something like that. I could barely lift that thing. [Laughs] But, 'cause the thing is the building was a fraternity house, so it was perfect for --

SY: The kitchen was big.

YM: Kitchen was big and they had two huge living rooms and a dining room, and I don't know how many rooms or how many it accommodated, but it was ideal for the purpose. It was right in town too.

SY: And all the people that lived in it, they would go and work their jobs and come back every day?

YM: Right, if they found a job before two weeks or something.

SY: That's right, they, so it was always people moving in and out 'cause they were only there for two weeks.

YM: That's right. That's right.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.