Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: You also mentioned that you made home brew in the mess hall.

GM: Oh, yes.

RP: Tell us about that.

GM: Well, one of the things that they used to deliver were apricots and plums and prunes dried, and people didn't know what they were. One time I took some pineapple juice -- we had cans of pineapple -- and I took the juice and put it in a gallon can, or jar, about so much, I was gonna drink that and I took it home and I put it on the shelf and I forgot about it. About a week later I says gosh, I got some pineapple juice, so I started drinkin' it. It wasn't bad, but I started getting warm. What's going on here? And actually I was getting intoxicated. It had fermented. And I thought gee, it, it brings me back to my kid, days when I was a kid and I was in L.A. at the time visiting with one of our family friends. His, his son was staying with us and we were, his father had become a cook in downtown, so we went to visit him and he fed us and then we went wandering around by the subway terminal, if you know where that is, Fifth and Hill Street. And we came across this place where they were selling, it was this big bowl with the bubbles, and they had grape juice in there, so we said we'd like some of that. For a big cup, for about two cents. We each had a cup of that, then after a while we got real warm, hot. We were, we're kids about ten years old and we were drunk. We start walkin' around; we lost our way and pretty soon it was getting dark and we said, "Gee, how do we get home?" So we saw a policeman and we asked him, "Hey, we want to get to Fifth and Hill Street." We were down by Crenshaw area. We had walked all the way. And he says that's too far. He took us to a Japanese couple and they took us to my house, drove us. But his father was frantic and he put a notice in the Japanese paper. And I forgot all about it, but a friend of ours reminded me years later that he had read this, and that time, when I thought about it back in camp, that's when I said hey, maybe there's a use for these fruits, dried fruits. So I started to experiment, putting water and sugar and yeast and it came out clear, once you took the residue and threw it out, but the top part, it was clear. It looked like apple vinegar, about that color. So every time we had a party I'd bring out these jars of home brew, and then after a while the other guys, Japanese cook said, "Why don't we make sake out of the rice?" So we, they started making rice sake. So we were always having something or other.