<Begin Segment 17>

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Mas Nakajo. And Mas, go ahead.

MN: Okay. Gettin' back to the job I had, besides the delivering oil and all that. I had the job... I once learned how to drive. So I got a job as a truck driver. More like a job training and my job was to drive around the block's mess hall and pick up garbage cans, garbage, to be dumped in a garbage out of the camp. So you had to go out of main gate, Manzanar, and head north about a mile on 395 and there's an area you could turn in. It's at end of an airfield, small airplane airfield. You passed that and go about a mile in and there's an area where you could dump your garbage. And that's the job I had, collecting garbage and taking it out of the camp and dumping it.

RP: And did they have a pit for the garbage?

MN: Right, a pit, yeah, yeah.

RP: And you said that, that part of that operation involved recovering some of the perishable food.

MN: Yeah, okay. I think what they did was, I don't know, it had a crew or what, they segregated all the perishable food and they accumulate that and take it to hog farm south of the camp. They had a hog farm there. In fact one of the guys that, in our camp worked as at the hog farm. So they used to take all that stuff to the hog farm.

RP: So was that, was the perishables segregated at the mess hall or at the dump when you brought the...

MN: I think it was at the dump. Because I don't think it was the mess hall. Because everything went into the garbage.

RP: Okay.

MN: So it had to be segregated at the dump.

RP: The dump.

MN: I don't, I don't see them. I don't know any, I didn't know anything about it.

RP: So what kind of truck did you learn how to drive on?

MN: Okay, it was a ton and a half Chevrolet, open bed -- or open, it had a side gate -- stick shift truck. Well, all I know is you had, you had to, first you, you clutch it. But a lot of time it doesn't go right, so you double clutch it. That's where you learn how to double clutch it, see. And when you double clutch it you could reduce gears, all that speed. So it was a lot of fun. More or less like a job training. So, that's how I learned how to drive a car.

RP: To drive.

MN: So when we were told that we're gonna have to leave camp in 1945, they said we need, need a driver's license to drive any vehicle. So they says come to the police station and for fifty cents we give you, issue a driver's license. And that's how I got my first driver's license.

RP: Wow. Fifty cents.

MN: Yeah. Fifty cents.

RP: How much is it today? God. That's a...

Off Camera: So the truck you drove to take the garbage over, it was, did it have a dump bed on it?

RP: No, it was open, open bed with the side rack.

Off Camera: So how did you get all the stuff off the truck?

MN: [Motions a throwing motion with hands.] Just, more or less dump it. You back up the truck and you dump it.

Off Camera: So it was full of trash cans, garbage cans?

MN: Yeah, yeah.

Off Camera: Okay.

RP: And did you collect garbage from every block in the camp?

MN: Well, just about try to... as much as you can.

RP: And so how many men were on the crew with you?

MN: Just two of us.

RP: Just one driver and...

MN: Yeah, one helper. That's when Kaz Endo came in.

RP: Oh.

MN: And then I, we used to work together a lot of times.

RP: Did you...

MN: Yeah, delivering oil and garbage and all of that.

RP: Yeah, you were involved in the infrastructure of the camp a lot.

MN: Yeah. And we, together we got a job making camouflage nets and all that.

RP: Yeah, a little bit more about the camouflage net factory. Did you work in a crew or did you weave, did you weave nets?

MN: Yeah, yeah, knit, weave.

RP: You worked with another group of guys?

MN: Well...

RP: By yourself.

MN: By yourself. All they do is give you a net and they give you the material and they give you the pattern to follow and that was it. Then you have another person doing the same thing next to you.

RP: Oh, okay.

MN: So it wasn't like a group. You just individual. Net, net, you'd just stay there and as they, you start from low, they lower the net and they, then after that they keep on pulling it up.

RP: Oh, uh-huh. And do you remember how long it would take you to weave a net?

MN: [Laughs] I don't remember that.

RP: The, some of the kids who worked in the net factory talked about some of the burlap strips were coated with chemicals and they got rashes --

MN: Rashes.

RP: -- from some, some of the chemicals.

MN: Oh, all I know is that things smells a lot. I don't know about the rashes. We didn't get rash but it gets kind of intoxicating, the smell. I used to wear a white mask. Because that fuzz too, it gets in your nose and... yeah, that's all I remember. But the, that smell used to really, I guess it's chemically treated or something. It used to get to me with that, them burlap fuzz. It used to get into my nose.

RP: Fibers.

MN: Yeah, fibers, yeah.

RP: So, you worked there the first summer you were there?

MN: Yeah, yeah.

RP: And...

MN: And then from, well from there I went to oil and then from there driving truck and from... I think the last job I had was working in a hospital boiler room. We had three boilers going for hospital. And we fire up two boilers and have one empty because we had to clean it, maintain it. Soot and all that, we had to clean it out. Then we alternate that then get the other one that had to be maintained, cleaned. So we used to, three of us used to work on shift.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.