<Begin Segment 18>

RP: One of the other jobs that you had while you were in camp was you were a junior cook for a while?

KY: Yeah, yeah. Sure did.

RP: Tell us a little bit about that.

KY: I don't know how we did but my brother and I and this other guy -- his name was, we called him Soupy, Soupy. That wasn't his real name but we nicknamed him Soupy -- so Soupy and my brother and myself, we palled around together, the three of us. Of course my brother was still going to school a lot because he was younger than I. But I don't know, I don't know how it got started but we got a job and worked at the kitchen as a junior cook. They called us junior cooks. Because we weren't a full cook, but we were junior cook. In other words, we helped the cook, helped prepare the meals. And we enjoyed that very much because for instance on the weekends we'd make fancy pastries. We made these pastries that you normally wouldn't have, but someone started making these pastries and so we were, we would at night after dinner was finished we'd come back to the kitchen and make these pastries for the morning. We were preparing it for the morning. And after we got through we would take 'em home for ourselves. And we had, there's three sisters that lived in the next block. They were our, they also worked in this kitchen where we worked. And they were... they would prepare food for the youngsters, babies. What do they call them? But anyway, on the way home we'd bring it home and we'd share what we brought home we gave it to those girls that who works in our kitchen. So they would enjoy it too. But that was fun and almost every weekend we'd make something and we'd share it with our friends. Yeah.

RP: So what type of, of things did you do in terms of preparation for the cooks?

KY: What?

RP: What type of jobs did you do in preparation for...

KY: Well, whenever we'd, whenever the cooks wanted a spell, a rest, we'd take over and help cook whatever they are doing. That's what we primarily were doing. We didn't make the main course. We just did the things that the cooks would get tired of doing because when you're cooking for hundreds of people, you make the same thing over and over and over again, right? So we'd help them cook. Once they start cooking we could follow suit and help them make the food that they would normally do. So it would help the cooks if they had some junior cooks like us helped them in the hot summer days. It's not easy cookin' over a hot stove. And what we did was we set up a ping-pong table. And we'd play each other. And the guy that loses has to go on and cook. So we became real good ping-pong players. [Laughs] If anything. Yeah. That was good. Yeah, we became real good at ping-pong. Yeah.

RP: So what shift did you have as a junior cook? Or did it...

KY: Usually the evening meal. My father, from the very moment we hit camp, he became a rice cook, a rice cook. Because you had to make rice in big, big containers. And my father at one time worked on a ship and apparently he was a cook on the ship. So was used to cooking large amounts of food, like making rice. And he was good at it. So, from the very start he was a rice cook for our block, our kitchen. And that's what he did all, all during the time that we were at camp. He was a rice cook. But we worked, my brother and I and my friend Soupy, we worked in the next block. We lived on 17 and we did the cooking on 18.

RP: Oh, you cooked on 18.

KY: But, there were a lot of fun things to do as a cook. You make these pastries and we played ping-pong during the time. And if you lost you'd have to cook. If you won you kept playing ping-pong. [Laughs]

RP: What are some of the, what are some of the dishes that you remember being served in the mess halls? You were saying that the same kind of food was prepared over and over and over again.

KY: Yeah, but you don't have the same diet every day. You have different meals every day. So they had a menu that they followed I guess. I don't know. But there was no lack of, of food to eat. Because you were a group of 100,000 people, the government had to supply us with, with food that I bet a lot of people on the outside couldn't get. Because it's an individual you have some food, but for with us it was a 100,000 people so they had to buy all the stuff. There was no lack of food that the kitchen wanted. They had access to any kind of food they wanted. So we were fed well.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.