<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So I want to ask you your impressions. So as you would make these deliveries and you would see the camps and how they were set up and everything, what were you thinking?

GS: I said, "What kind of living is this?" Hot, hundred and ten degrees outside, and I don't know what, hundred and thirty or something inside the room itself. Tarpapered roof, that absorbs all the heat. Then the wind would blow, floors had cracks, still, they're not flush, there's always a slight... and all the dust would fly up inside in the room. They would try to put paper, paper on it, flat, to keep it from, wind from blowing up, stuff like that. I don't know how so many people lived there.

TI: How would you describe the people? When you saw the people, did they seem different or, in terms of emotionally, or were they about the same as if you had seen them in L.A. or someplace?

GS: Well, I didn't know them that good, I just, we just talked to 'em when we just made the deliveries to them. And besides, some of the Isseis would try to say something, but I couldn't understand the Japanese, I don't talk Japanese. [Laughs] It was bad. My, like I say, my education was bad, my grammar was bad, and I put my sentences like they should be put into.

TI: But I'm curious, so the people in camp, they were, they were fed. I mean, they had the cafeterias where they would eat, and so you would bring this extra food. So was this food used like in their individual barracks, they would make...

GS: The individual persons bought, they would, in their home they would try to open the canned goods to eat. But the Koji, they made sake.

TI: Oh, okay.

GS: Dig a pit underneath the barracks, and they would make the sake. That's what the Isseis wanted the Kojis was for, to make sake. They wouldn't need to just make rice, they wouldn't use the rice for the rice.

TI: Yeah, that's why I wasn't... 'cause I knew they had rice in...

GS: They had regular rice in camp, but then that rice, they can't take it and use it for, to make whiskey, sake. So Kojis is easier to, you can't eat that as, like, rice like you do the other, Koji itself. So they made sake, that group would get together, the Isseis would make rice. They would peddle so much, some of the other families would, the Issei would buy some of it, the other would buy some of the hundred pound bag and was making sake. [Laughs]

TI: Good, that's, this is enlightening. How frequently did you make these deliveries?

GS: I only went twice, myself. And then Yoshiyuki, he was the son of the Katos' store, he would, couple of other times he would go.

TI: So any other memories about camp that you can recall, just in your short visits that you remember? Like did you recognize anyone when you were in camp that you would see?

GS: No, I couldn't recognize it. Only the people, they worked on the, came out to work on the farm, I got to know 'em. But other than that, the rest of the, I never did get to meet the Wadas or whatchacallit, where they might have been Camp 2, 3, so we were in Camp 1. So there's 1, 2 and 3, next mile was 2 and the next, well, that was three miles away was Camp 3. So we never did get to Camp 3.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.