Densho Digital Archive - Osamu Mori Interview (denshovh-mosamu-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Sam Mori. And, Sam, you were just describing some of the unsanitary conditions at Santa Anita. Can you describe where the latrines were in relationship to your barracks?

OM: Yeah, we were at the bottom, slight grade going up towards latrine and I remember the mess hall, I guess the mess hall was -- I just read recently about the blue, blue mess hall was the one that was in the stable area. And once they, you know, the thousands of people are using this community john, you know, it overflows. And when it overflows, it coming down the slight grade down towards where we were. But it was not only us because when we went to the barracks out in the parking lot, there was probably more people out there than in the barracks... in the stables. Because I understand it now that there was... there was six mess halls, each feeding about 3,000 people. You know, so that's about 18,000 people and that's about what was in camp in Santa Anita. Four of those mess halls were in the parking area so the parking area was much larger than the stable area. And then one was in the grand stand so they probably had the best, you know, facilities and things like that if they were using... I don't think they were using that because I could still remember some of the activities that, you know, you talk about what we did for entertainment, we were just as bad in camp as we were outside.

RP: Give me a few examples.

OM: Any door, we tried every door and any door to see if it was open and we used to sneak into Santa Anita, you know, the clubhouse. And nobody was there, it was wide open, we used to have a good time. They had grand pianos, they had everything in there, you know. I don't want to tell you what I did there but we had a good time. [Laughs] We were fourteen or fifteen years old, just about the time when you're looking for trouble, you know. We had kind of exciting times there.

RP: Do you remember bouts of diarrhea or other problems with the food?

OM: No, I didn't have any. One of the things that for activity we used to do is see if we could hit every mess hall during that lunch period or whatever period. If it was open for two hours, we'd try to hit every one of 'em. Not because we loved the food but maybe they had ice cream in one for a meal, why don't we see if we can hit six of 'em.

RP: Did you?

OM: No, we never caught six, it's too much. The distance was too far. Many times we had at least four, four or five. As young kids... all you had was a button, a red button, a blue button, white, orange or whatever and you just put that on and go right through the line.

RP: That's interesting, some folks in Santa Anita talked about the food distribution wasn't very consistent, especially in the early months, that there was a lot less food getting into the camp than there should have been. And people were, you know, complaining about being hungry.

OM: I don't know about Santa Anita though. I don't recall any... was there a riot or anything there? I read somewhere just recently saying that there was but I don't recall. My brother was a truck driver for food distribution, you know, to the mess halls. I don't recall him ever talking about it and I don't remember any riots or anything like that. Although I read that in the paper just the other day, about somebody's talking about a riot in Santa Anita. And I don't recall that.

RP: My understanding of it was there was some type of search for contraband in part of the camp and MPs went through there and people got worked up about that.

OM: Upset about that? I don't recall. Obviously, I wasn't concerned about it, I don't remember that anyway. I think most of the food... I think every camp probably had rumors flying that administrators were abusing their authority and black market was going on and this and that. I remember in Tule I was a young a kid yet but my mother had applied for a job as a cook. And she couldn't go so she asked me to take her place and so I learned how to cook rice and wash rice, because that was the job, the job was... I don't know if it was a specialized job or whatever but I learned to cook rice in a big pot and measure the water. But they had it all kind of figured out anyway, you didn't have to measure it like this or whatever. But they had a little gadget, you know, you put in and the water had to come to that level, very mechanical, you know. But the idea is you had to steam it so I think the trick was to make sure that there wasn't leakage of the steam any place. And so you spent most of your time going around trying to plug up the holes, you know. [Laughs] But it was a good experience. I was around sixteen maybe.

RP: Get back to Santa Anita just for a few more questions. Were you aware of the guard towers there and barbed wire fences?

OM: You know, I don't recall any guard towers. First of all, I never went near the fence, like I said, I was always messing around near the clubhouse and spending my time in mess halls and things like that. You know, I don't even think there was any guard houses, guard towers... couldn't respond to that.