<Begin Segment 16>

RP: Now, you, you entered the military as a raw recruit. You never had any military service before. Was there anybody at Manzanar that kind of took you under your wing like a mentor type of guy?

RD: Well, not exactly, but there was a... I can't think of his name now. Big fellow, he was, he was mostly Indian, and I've been trying to think of his name. And he kind of, he had about three, four years in the service, he kind of hung around with us, talked to him quite a bit, and kind of looked out for you a little bit, I know he did me. And, but I can't remember his name. I've been trying to think of his name off and on, and I'll be darned if I can think of it. Because I used to talk to him all the time. In fact, there was this one time, came back after payday and I picked up some liquor on the base, and I had a pint of rum. And I was, I was all liquored up, and I got up the next morning, they wanted me to fall out for duty, I told 'em to go to hell, I wasn't going to do any duty or anything like that. So they sent me over to the guard house. Well, I took the bottle with me, I had it over in the guardhouse there, and then they started putting me out there in full field pack and my punishment was walking out there in the sun all day long. In the meantime, this one guy got in contact with me. He gave me a couple bucks, and I told him where it was, and him trying to get into the guardhouse, he got thrown in there. [Laughs] He ended up getting his, getting the little bottle of rum, but that was kind of a funny story to think of that. But I can't remember his name. I liked him real well, and he'd been around quite a bit. And you think you always, with somebody like that, you'd remember their name, but it just, it just don't ring a bell at all.

RP: You were talking about Johnny Pavole, and Johnny had a wife who lived in Bishop.

RD: Well, she was at the time. Now, where'd he say... I guess he was from Folsom and she had moved out there. And while she was there, she had her baby.

RP: In Bishop.

RD: Yeah. Now whether her folks or somebody lived down there or were down there with her, if I can remember right, I don't know whether she lived there and that's why she came there or if she just, her folks never came out there. But I assume that she had some relatives there, and that's why she was there, and he was stationed there, so she had the baby out there. He was allowed to go down and visit her, but like Bob and I would sneak along with him and go down, hitchhike down there with him. There was one time we took off on a Friday night, and I can't remember who it was, it was me and two other guys. On a six-hour pass, we went all the way to Los Angeles and back, we got back at six o'clock Monday morning, hitchhiked all the way down and all the way back. We had one heck of a time, I can't remember who went with me, and that was on a six-hour pass because the CQ, they'd always march, we'd call up on the roll call and everything else, everybody would cover for you and you'd get away with something like that. So we were kind of, pretty close-knit unit as far as that went. And there was quite a few times and then they had a bus that ran to Mojave, but it only ran every twelve hours. Like when I went home on leave, I hitchhiked down 'cause I got off at six o'clock, I'd have to wait 'til midnight or something like that, I was down there before eight o'clock or so, or nine o'clock until some guy picked me up, and I went by, what was it? San Joaquin special or something. Took me to Oakland, I got on the ferry, crossed the ferry over to San Francisco, got on the streetcar and got home.

RP: How many, how much of a furlough would you get? Three or four days?

RD: I had five days. And somehow I must have miscounted because I took seven or eight days. It was over Christmastime, my uncle just got back from being over on a ship there, and come back, him and I were celebrating a little bit. Kind of lost track of time.

RP: In talking with Bobby, he characterized his time at Manzanar as being very dull and boring.

RD: Pardon?

RP: He characterized his time --

RD: Oh, yeah, there wasn't really that much for us to do, not like being in the big city, you know. Like we went to Lone Pine, there wasn't nothing there outside of a couple bars, I guess. We went to the ones on the far side of town there, and I can't remember what the name of it was. But every month I'd have my watch hocked for ten dollars and my ring for five dollars, then I'd get paid, the first thing I'd do is get that out of hock, and then pay off my debts and go get my liquor and stuff. 'Cause, actually, there wasn't too much, nothing you could do to spend your money on, really, unless you went down and hang out in the bar all the time. That's why most of us went down -- well, not most of us, but a few of us went down there and hung out. In Independence, we met a few girls down there and we traveled around and had some fun.

RP: Was there a, did you go on dates with these girls?

RD: Oh, yeah, we just went down there, and there was some kind of a dance that went on one time and we went to 'em there. They were seventeen, eighteen years old, I guess, somewhere around there. They came to that place there, that's how we happened to meet 'em. It was a meeting place for kids and stuff like that, I guess. Of course, we weren't much older, we were only eighteen or nineteen ourselves.

RP: Did you do any, you mentioned that before you joined the military that you had done some fishing in San Francisco. Did you do any fishing or hunting while you were at the camp at Manzanar?

RD: No, no, no. Nope, never did, never did any hunting 'til after I got up here and got out of the service, you know. Come up here, but never around any guns or anything. There was never any guns in the family. And my uncles that hung out there, they all worked or something, or retired themselves. So they didn't have any guns or anything.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.