Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 16>

RP: George, can you lead us through a typical morning and afternoon shift? What, what did you do, I mean, what time did you wake up, when did you get to the mess hall?

GM: Since, since I was the head chef, I used to be the second there. The first one started, started the stoves and they would light the stove that... in Manzanar it was easy because it was oil, but the oil stoves sometimes get gunked up and we had to clean it up. The night shift never did that. They just looked at everything and took off, so the morning guys had to clean the, the jets and get everything ready. And then the first thing I did was the big pots. I'd start the hot water for, hot water, we need hot water for everything, so we'd put that big ten gallon pot on the stove and start those, and then I'd look at the menu for the day. Usually first it was hotcake or toast and eggs or whatever, scrambled eggs, so it was kind of an easy thing to do, but for lunch they had different menus and I had to dump out, I used to just dump it on the floor, carrots and peas, beans, whatever and tell 'em okay, junior cooks, they were assigned to peel 'em and dice 'em and whatever. Then the meat, I would tell 'em what to do with it, make chop suey or spaghetti and we had to grind the hamburger for the meat sauce and this kind of thing, but I would lay out everything for them. That was my job. And after we served everybody for lunch we cleaned up and that was the end of my shift, so I'd go home and -- yes?

RP: When would you finish your shift? What time?

GM: I would, it'd be about one o'clock, and then one, one-thirty, somewhere around there, that's when we quit serving. We'd start serving around twelve and by one o'clock people would be all finished and the dishes would be all washed, pots and pans would be all cleaned. So from two o'clock was my, most of the time I was free. I'd go back and take a shower. We had a community shower and since it was during the day I was the only one in there. But then every once in a while they'd give me a duty for, making hot water for the bath. It was in the back of the boiler room, and if you fed too much -- well, in Tule Lake we had coal, if we had too much coal in there it, the boilers would stop (burning), so you had to feed it a little at a time 'til you got a good fire going.

KP: Did you have a bath in Manzanar? In the...

GM: Oh, yeah. What the workers did is they made a Japanese bath and about five or six people could get in there.

KP: This was in Block 18?

GM: Yeah. I think they had it in other blocks, too. But it was made out of concrete and you put hot water in there and put a wooden lid so it'd keep it hot, and that was part of the duty for whoever had the duty for that... and it seems like every holiday it was my turn. You know the latrine colonel, what you call him, and you have to clean all the toilets before the big rush and then they, they make it sloppy after half a dozen people come in; it's a mess.

KP: I wanted to ask you one more question, you said you had a big walk-in refrigerator?

GM: Uh-huh.

KP: Did it look anything like that one? [Hands GM a picture]

GM: Yeah, they had different kinds. They had some (with) doors all the way to the bottom.

KP: There's a door on the side of that one. There's, you can't quite see it.

GM: Okay. And these were the shelves. Yeah. We would put some of the produce and the leftovers and things like that... yeah, this is before they put in the ceiling.

KP: Well, it's, actually, that's today.

GM: That's the one that came...

KP: Yeah, that's one of today's pictures. That's the mess, that's the, that particular picture I just showed would be refrigerators, the refrigerators in our mess hall today.

GM: Yeah, we didn't have hats like that. We had hats that looked more like the soda jerks.

KP: And a couple more things about the kitchen... oh, baking. You...

GM: We had these black sheet metal pans, flat, and we used to make layer cake, flat cakes, and that was done by our baker. We had a baker.

KP: Didn't you, weren't you involved in making pies and things like that?

GM: Yeah, well, most of the pies and things we used to make at night, after everybody closing down and gone home. And that was, Mr. Honda was our baker and on the QT he would teach us how to make pies and, like donuts, some nights we would make a thousand donuts and after we deep fried 'em, my sister used to hate 'em because she said they were greasy, but all we had was lard. We didn't have any vegetable oils, so we had to deep fry 'em, and then after we drained off the oil I put 'em in a paper sack with sugar in there and we'd shake 'em and get 'em sugarcoat.

KP: How were those accepted by the people?

GM: Oh, the kids loved 'em. Yeah, they used to come from blocks away.

KP: How would they know?

GM: Word gets around. One of 'em tell the other one, "Hey, they got donuts." So as far as I know we were the only ones that were making donuts. We used to do 'em about once a week.