<Begin Segment 9>

JA: Who was Sergeant Bug?

MS: [Laughs] He was an MP, Sergeant Bug was an MP. He was kind of cute. [Laughs]

JA: That's good. Did you have a social life there while you were there?

MS: Well, we had an MP camp right next to the camp, and in the evening they would, on the weekend they would have a, well, a bus or a truck, basically, you'd get into it and they would drive you up to Independence, to the hall there and you'd have dances there. And then you could take it and it'd take you back. Or if you weren't doing that, sometimes you'd have friends who had cars because they weren't making cars then. So if you had a car, you were fortunate indeed. And also, gasoline was rationed. But if you could grab a ride, you could go to Lone Pine to the movies, and see whatever was showing at the movies there, and go out and have dinner. And both of these towns were quite small.

JA: Tell me a little bit about the town of Lone Pine.

MS: Lone Pine?

JA: Yeah, then.

MS: Then?

JA: Yeah.

MS: Well, Lone Pine was, well, it had a grocery store there that we all went when we wanted to buy groceries. When we moved in, they built a permanent building or so-called, for the Caucasians. And we had indoor plumbing there, we didn't have to use the latrine, which was a big advantage. And it was warmer and much nicer, and we could buy, we had a little kitchen or something like that, so we could go and buy groceries and food if we didn't want to eat at the mess hall. Otherwise, everybody ate at the mess hall. And when I first got there, the mess hall was really a shock to me. We had picnic benches, and they brought in the food on these platters, you know, it was sort of family-style. Well, they were still doing building there, and so they had all these big construction workers. And if you didn't get your fork out and grab fast, you weren't gonna get anything. [Laughs] But it was an interesting thing. And then when a VP would come, VIP would come, they would put sheets on the table. So whenever we came in and saw sheets on the tables for tablecloths, then we'd, "Oh, we got a VIP in camp."

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.