Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 11>

KP: And when did you arrive in camp?

GM: It was very dark. It was dusk and it was in April, so you know the days weren't that long, and it was windy and dusty and the visibility was terrible, so I could hardly see anything.

KP: What, what was that like? What was going on when you arrived?

GM: It wasn't much of anything. They had to stop construction for the day.

KP: So what did you, what did you have to do? I mean...

GM: Well, first we had to register and then they told us where we were gonna, which barrack you were gonna go to. Then they gave us mattress covers. It was kind of like canvas, canvas sacks, and told us to go to a certain place and we had to get straw and stick it into the canvas bag. And then after we had done this and gone into our room they told us to go eat. We had to go somewhere. I can't remember which mess hall it was, but my, my youngest (sister) was just about two (months) old and I had to carry her.

KP: Your youngest sister?

GM: Yeah, my youngest sister.

KP: Who was that again?

GM: It was Grace. She was born after Pearl Harbor, so I had to carry her in my arms. So anyway --

KP: How did you protect her from the wind and the...

GM: I had her under my coat, jacket. I put it so...

KP: Do you remember what you ate that first night?

GM: Yeah, it was kinda like wieners and sauerkraut. Something like that. And then they had coffee cups, it was the army stuff. It was hinged, so every once in a while they'd just fall, just rotate, and you'd get hot coffee all over you.

KP: So when you finally got into your room, so who all was in, in your barrack?

GM: My mother and father and my brothers and my younger, two sisters.

KP: And what was in there?

GM: Oh, there were just the cots. We had canvas cots first and then they gave us metal cots later, but we had to sleep on this straw mattress, and there's no pillow, so we just took our trousers and wrapped 'em up, used those for pillows.

KP: So was the wind blowing when you got there?

GM: Oh, yes.

KP: During the night?

GM: Oh, yes. And then, and the wind was coming up through the floor. They used that rough green wood, so it had shrunken a little, in a lot of places it had shrunk, and you could see open spaces there.

KP: And what was on the outside of the building?

GM: It was, well, they had bulldozed the sagebrush, so it was just, like, sand, so the wind would just kick up the dust and be all over everything.

KP: What was your, do you remember what your, your family atmosphere was? I mean, was it very solemn being there?

GM: We were so busy that... well, one thing is that since I was out of school and they sent me my diploma and everything, I had nothing to do, so my father heard -- it was about two months after we'd been there -- he heard that this mess hall in our block needed to be operational, so he volunteered myself and him to set up these stoves, heavy stoves. They came in big crates. We had to...

KP: [Hands GM a picture] Does it look like that?

GM: Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And they were back to back. They had two on the side here and two on the other side, and there was space about so much in between. And we had crocks there, and that's where I used to make my home brew.

KP: And that's before the mess hall was finished?

GM: No, after, long time after that. And they had water spigots on top and we used to fill that water in here, but once you filled it up it was a bear to get (them) down there. And this is what we used to cook rice in. We used to have rice on the bottom part and then another one we put on top for the lid.