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Title
Oral History Interview with George Yoshio Matsumoto
Created Date
June 27th, 1995
Description
Nisei male, born on February 13, 1920 in Sebastopol, California to a migrant farm worker family. By the time George was in sixth grade, he attended six to eight schools and lived in migrant housing. The family eventually owned a chicken ranch in Sebastopol. On December 8, 1941 George's father was arrested by the FBI and imprisoned in a Department of Justice camp until 1943. George avoided internment by moving voluntarily to Utah in March 1942 at age twenty-two. He applied for a travel visa in the District Attorney's office in Santa Clara. His draft status of 4C (enemy alien) exempted him from military service. His mother was evacuated to Merced Assembly Center, then to Amache, Colorado. In Utah, George worked as a houseboy, then at a cannery. His exposure to internment camp was a brief visit to his fianc'e in Amache. Although the war ended in August 1945, he was drafted in early 1945 and sent to Military Intelligence Service language school in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. As the sole support of a wife, child and elderly parents he was given a dependency discharge. The chicken farm was sold and the family moved to Stockton, California where George opened a Red Wing shoe store which sold only men's work shoes and boots. At retirement in 1986 George owned four retail stores: two in Stockton, one in Modesto and one in Yakima, Washington.
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