Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 13>

GM: The dishwashers were.

KP: Okay. This is --

GM: Then on this end, when they put the plaster board in there I used to hide coffee. The coffee was kind of, it was light. It was a big sack, but it was light. And I just stuck it up... because if, a couple times when the quartermaster came, they would inspect the amount of garbage. And they, they say, "Hey, Sergeant -- "

KP: Excuse me, one second here. I just need to slate the tape. This is tape two of a continuing interview with George Matsumoto, and so you're talking about when they put the plaster board over the ceiling of the panty?

GM: The whole mess hall.

KP: The whole mess hall, that, that you, there was a access?

GM: There was an access on one corner and what I did was I put some boards up there and hid coffee, so when they tore down that mess hall I'm sure that they found some coffee up there.

KP: So why did you have to hide the coffee?

GM: Because the, there was a second lieutenant originally that came around and he had a sergeant with him and they would inspect the garbage cans. We had garbage cans out in the back, and he would say, "Sergeant, this mess hall has too much stuff."

KP: Too much?

GM: Refuse. Too much garbage. So he says, "Cut down their rations." [Laughs]

KP: So what did you do about that?

GM: Well, so what you did is that, on the outside of the mess hall was a firebreak, and at night we used to go and dig holes in there and bury our garbage. Not all of it, 'cause they'd get suspicious.

KP: So why, why do you think there was so much, or too much garbage that they limited...

GM: They never cut down our rations.

KP: But why do you think there was so much garbage?

GM: Why would they?

KP: Why did you?

GM: Oh, I didn't think it was that much, but the, the quartermaster, they thought that it was excessive, overflowing garbage can.

KP: So was the food, what kind of food was, were you getting? Early on, when you first got there, what kind of food?

GM: Well, we used to get bolognas, those big things, you know? I don't know if you've seen 'em hangin' in the butcher shop, but they used to come like this and we used to get couple dozen of those things and we're supposed to cook that. And how many ways can you cook bologna? People used to rebel, and you'd put it on the plate but they wouldn't eat it, so we just had to throw it away. So you get five hundred people there -- not five hundred, but pretty close, three hundred, two, three hundred -- and if they don't eat it and it just stacks up by the trash, you got a lot of garbage there.

KP: So you took it out and buried it?

GM: So we used to bury it. That's when we, one time we saw that there was a gully toward the end of where there was a barbed wire fence. They had a warning fence that was kind of a little white wooden fence. It was kind of warning that nobody, that was no man's land after that. Between that and there, there was another fence that was a barbed wire fence that was the outer fence.

KP: Was it a fence or just a series of posts? Do you remember?

GM: No, they had a wooden rail there, by where we were, and then, oh, about fifty yards or so it was another fence and that was the no man's land. You're not supposed to be there. But we used to time the sweep of the searchlight and we ran out to the edge there, and there was like a gully there and, by the fence, and we'd dig out an area and then we'd stick sagebrush in there to cover it up. And there was a patrol that came by there. It was a perimeter road, went around the camp, so there's a Jeep come around, look, and they didn't see anything there and just keep goin'.

KP: And what did you use this, this hole under the fence for?

GM: We snuck out one time for, for... I was gonna go catch fish. So my chief, chief, kitchen chief got wind of it and there was two, two other guys that wanted to go with, so there were four of us. We, one Saturday night we went out and went up to the mountain.