Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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KP: So your family moved down to Ocean Park. What motivated that move?

GM: Well my father had bought a amusement concession. It was a fish, goldfish, if I recall, a goldfish pond. It was something that they had in Japan but was never here, and he bought it from a fellow in Saga Kenjin, a friend. And what they had was a rod about so long that was made out of wood and then they had a metal ring and it was a wire (hoop) that held a piece of tissue paper, and with that you're supposed to scoop up the goldfish and you just yank up on it like that then the paper will tear, so you had to be very careful and you had to cut through to the edge to catch these fish. Then the people that wanted to take 'em home, we used to give it to 'em in what they call oyster pail. It's like Chinese takeout places (have), and some people didn't want the fish so they, depending on how many fish they caught, we had different prizes. They were mostly plaster dolls. They were Betty Boop and Pluto and Mickey Mouse and these kind of things in those early days. Then later on the, they had the Snow White, bunch of Doc and Happy and Sneezy and all those. So those were the prizes that we gave out. And I inherited it when I was (thirteen). My father decided to, it wasn't enough money to sustain the family because we were all growing up and needed more money, so he told me, "Take over," and I was thirteen years old. So all through, through junior high and high school I ran the thing myself.

KP: What did your father do?

GM: Well, he moved to Los Angeles and he worked for a produce packing (firm) for Frank Naruto, and what he did... before that he went and, actually went out in the field and, and packed cauliflower and celery, put 'em in crates and so forth at different farmers, but that got kinda hectic, so he moved into the distribution end of it. And they would pack these celery and things and send 'em back East. They put 'em in refrigerated cars. So that was his job until the war started. So when the war started they had a curfew and he was living in Los Angeles, and here we were Ocean Park, about thirteen miles away and you weren't supposed to travel more than five miles, but I drove, I had to drive up because I had to take his laundry and... every week. And then once in a while, a great while he'd get off and I had to bring him home, so it was kinda hectic.

But the funny thing is that even when Pearl Harbor started, I was working on the Ocean Park pier there, and people, was calm. Nobody was hysterical. And of course there's a six or seven hour difference in time between here and Pearl Harbor, so it was late in the afternoon that papers came out, and people said Pearl Harbor is bombed and they said, where is Pearl Harbor? No one knew where it was. I knew because I followed the news. So people just (were) calm, they were going about their business, and I just closed up the usual time and went home. And then the next day, at school, they said, "Okay, we're all gonna go down to the (outdoor) auditorium and hear President Roosevelt's speech." So he was blasting the dastardly attack of Pearl Harbor and "the day will live on in infamy," this kind of thing. People were just kind of somber. They just went about their business. And I, I continued working until the evacuation, about a week before we turned over the key to the Ocean Park Amusement Corporation, because I couldn't find a buyer. Nobody wanted to buy it. And as far as the school was concerned I was a graduating senior, so my teachers were very nice. They said, "Oh, we'll just take your midterm grade and make it the final grade." And I said, "Fine, that's great." I got out of the final exams. So once I was in camp I used to write to my teachers, and our principal, he was real cool because all the rest of the high schools in our area, they wouldn't recognize your grades or anything, so they denied them their diploma, except at Santa Monica High School, and there was about six or seven of us seniors, and they sent me my diploma right to the camp, so I still have that in the original envelope. And I had written to my coach about the letters that we had earned and he sent 'em to me and I gave 'em out to the, my fellow schoolmates and classmates.

KP: So going to high school, living in Ocean Park, did you, did your family live in the same house the whole time you were in Ocean Park?

GM: We originally had this big Victorian mansion, but that was sold, we had to move. [Phone rings] I don't know who that would...

KP: Oh, is it okay?

GM: And then we moved to a smaller one because it was sold. In those Depression days houses were very cheap, so I think this, this one sold for about two thousand five hundred dollars. [Laughs] Real... we had no money, so we just moved to another place that was about a third this size.