Densho Digital Archive - George Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 9>

KP: So when your family had to leave, where were you supposed to gather?

GM: We were supposed to go to the Venice Community Center. So my, my best friend, he drove there and I had sold his father, this banker that was giving me all that trouble, anyway, I sold my Model T, Model A Ford for sixty-five dollars, (...) I had just bought four (new) tires. Of course, in those days tire, you can buy a tire for about five or ten dollars. It's cheap.

KP: When did you buy your car?

GM: Nineteen, what was it? 1939, I think. It was about ten years old when I bought it. Bought it from a friend of ours. Yeah. So anyway, when, years later when, when I came back to Santa Monica and I finally met Mr. Hills again, it was for his fiftieth wedding anniversary, and when I walked in the door he saw me and he got up out of his chair and he smiled. And I said, "Wow, that's the first time you smiled at me." Until then he was always a stern lookin' guy and I was kind of intimidated. He came and shook my hand and said, "Yeah, you were right." Said, "We went to war." So anyway, when I was a kid I used to read these naval history and I learned a lot of interesting stories about Code Orange, they called it, the Japanese fleet Code Orange, and every year they used to have a military exercise. And one year, in '33, maybe it was... I read where they had this black and blue fleet. They split this fleet and one U.S. admiral had the blue fleet and the other one had another contingent, and they were assigned battleships and one of 'em had two, the carriers, the Saratoga and Lexington, and this admiral in charge of that fleet had been a captain on, on the Saratoga when it was first built (and) launched. So he was, he was the enemy. He was a, he was the Japanese fleet, and his task was to invade, attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, so he split his fleet. He sent the aircraft carriers and a couple destroyers on a north, northern route to attack Hawaii. And he picked it on purpose because the word was out that they had bad weather in the north. And then also he picked Sunday as another element of surprise, and then he launched all these planes. He ran into bad weather, but he launched all the planes without losing one, and everybody thought that they would, they would be destroyed before they even got to, in range of Pearl Harbor, because in those days the planes had a range of about two hundred miles and they figured that they had to be pretty close to Pearl Harbor before they could launch any planes and by that time they would detect the fleet. But he, he snuck through there and their bad weather and came up with a...

KP: So it was like a rehearsal before it actually happened?

GM: A rehearsal.

KP: Yes, okay.

GM: And the Japanese observers saw this thing. He, he clobbered the airplanes that were on the ground, just like during Pearl Harbor, and the fleet was all there, but people didn't believe that they could do this type, sort of thing so they hushed everything up. So the battleship admirals had their way. They said, "Oh, we would've found the, the carriers and sank 'em." And they claim that they shot down so many planes when they didn't. They didn't. They shot one. So the Japanese admirals, they noticed all this and they kept account of it, and they were going back, going back to Tokyo. So couple years later after they (made) the plans that they (...) agreed to attack Pearl Harbor when all the battleships were lined up.

KP: So they used the same plan that they had seen?

GM: Yeah, well, general plan. And then there was a British war (writer) -- well, he was, of course, author, but he was very knowledgeable about the navy and he came up with a story, a history, of a future attack --

KP: Right. I think I read that.

GM: -- and claimed that Japan could have a bastion of islands fortified, and first they would destroy the fleet at Pearl Harbor and they would have all these mandated islands from World War I fortified.

KP: Yeah. I think I, I think I've read that.

GM: And then Yamamoto was in Washington at the time that book came out and he, he was very impressed with it, so he brought it back to Tokyo and when he went back he lectured about this, about this Pearl Harbor plan. So that was the general (plan) --

KP: It was known at that time, yeah.