Comment on charges made by the Denver Post in the issue of April 23

WAR RELOCATION AUTIORITY

WASHINGT ON

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The Denver Post in a series of articles, the first of whi ch

appeared in the issue of April 23, charged that excess stocks of

' food were being "hoardead" at the Heart Mountain relocation center

near Cody, read and tnat the people of Japanese ancestry living

at the center were being "feasted" on foods which were not obtainable

by the American vublic generally.

In making these allegations, the Post ignored three basic

facts:

1. Residents of sie ath Metinbertin are complying with the same

food rationing regulations that apply to the rest of the

civilian povulation. The War Relocation Authority has

since March been registered with the Office of Price Aa-

ministration as an "institutional user", subject to all

tho: bhatriehiais imposed scales consumers. Even before

rationing became mandatory, the quotas suggested by the

Office of Price Administration were adhered to on a

voluntary basis.

So RO ao ee has the cost of food supplied to evacuees at

Heart, Mountain exceeded 46cent per person per aa, For the

month of March the cost of food supplied to evacuees

was 36scent per person per day.

5. Although it is true that stocks of certain rationed _

processed foods were excessive, the total dollar value

of food on hand on Aprii 16 was $246,000, or the equivalent

in dollar value of a G0-days! Sie.

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A general statewment of tne policies of the War Relocation

Authority in providing food for relocation centers is attached.

The detailed charges made by the Post in its April 23 issue

are quoted.below, followed by comments by officials of the War HReloca-

tion Authority.

"JAPS PETTED AND FEASTED IN U.S. WHILE AMERICANS IN NIPPON ARE TORTURED"

tt s 2 : : :

I visited and checked warehouses filled to their eaves with every tyoe

of rationed food, much of which cannot be purchased for love nor money

by the American people ..."

"T gaw a carload of the finest oranges and another carload of choice

grapefruit being unloaded and stored ..."

"T discovered canned vegetables -- tomatoes, beets, beans, peas,

spinach, pumpkin, corn, and sauerkraut, and fruits including pears,

peaches, cherries, and blackberries with a total point value of

20,017,222. This checked against the camp population of 10, 400 --

equals a supply of these rationed foods for 3 years, { months, and

14 days." |

"In the warehouses I found 86,480 cans of fruit -- 81,860 of these

are the No. 10 or six and one-half pound can. I found 268,293 cans of

rationed vegetables, 114,885 of these are the No. 10 cans and 153,408

No. 2 cans. I discovered i!1,405 packages of cereals ... Stacked to

the eaves in the warehouses and on pantry shelves in the mess halls

were 61,914 jars of jellies and jam ... There were 58,840 pounds of

macaroni, spaghetti and noodles, and 10,320 pounds of dry beans and

split peas. There were 3,070 of these tiny (fowr-ounce) cans of cinna-

mon, 1,229 of cloves, 2,163 of mustard, and 6,247 of pepper, plus a

100-lb. barrel of pepper. [I found 6,653 gallons of mayonnaise -- and

just before I arrived, according to Robertson (Project Director),

some 4,000 gallons haa been shipped out to other camps."

The relocation center at Heart Mountain with a population of

more than-10,000 people is the fifth largest city in Wyoming. The

center has been in existence less than a year end must depend almost

entirely for its food supply on sources outside the state of Wyoming.

Its location, remote a distributing centers, makes it nec-

essary to carry a considerable stock of food, particularly during the

winter months.

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Food for the Heart Mountain center is ourchased through the

Army Quartermaster Corps, which may, in compliance with regulations

of the Office of Defense Transportation, ship certain foods in car-

load lots even though the center has ordered in lesser quantity. In

January, for example, the following quantities of food were shipped

to Heart Mountain over and above what was actually ordered: 5.156

cans of beets; 5,846 cans of string beans; 3,156 cans of peas; 3,02)

cans of spinach, all in No. 10 (S%-ib) size cans: 14,000 pounds of

flour; 10,524 jars of jams; 7,608 jars of jelly; and 37,896 cans of

corn in No. 2 size cans in place of 4,800 No. 10-size cans ordered.

At an earlier date, at the request of the Quartermaster Corps, three

eee or canned peas were ai sase an Heart Mountain warehouses for

storage, in order to dispose of an Army surplus in this commodity.

The figure quoted in the article on ration points (20,017,222)

is from the inventory of February 28. The actval point value of

rationed processed foods on hand at the center at the time of the

Post writer's visit was slightly less than fifteen million points.

Of the four major categories of rationed foods -- meats and

fats, sugar, coffee, and processed foods -- the center had a surplus

only in the one category -- processed foods. All rationed processed

foods at Heart Mountain were ordered by the center before rationing

became effective. None has been ordered since February. The

inauguration of point rationing of processed foods in March greatly

reduced the rate at which these foods could be used in feeding at the

center, and thereby created a condition in which supplies of certain

items became greater than the center's requirements for a vekeonsble

period. All inventories of such foods were properly declared to the

Office of Price Administration, and the War Relocation Authority is

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charged by that aneney with the orderly liguidation of the excess stocks.

On March 11, 1943, on a tour of inspection representing the

Director of WRA, Colonel Erle M. Wilson visited the Heart Neintedin center

and. conferred with project officials in regard to the precuteele th

foods. He returned to Washington March 15, and, based on the infor-

mation which he and others had bbe tebe WRA officials took action to

bring about a reduction in the inventory to approximately three months'

supply of staples.

Two proposals were advanced dor `sebenevichine this: first,

transfer of certain food items to other relocation centers snaeabed by

the Authority; and second, transfers to nearby Army camps and other

military establishments.

The Authority at that time was engaged in establishing new |

procedures for operating under OPA rationing regulations, and trans-

fers to other relocation centers were delayed until eates procedures

could be decided upon.

Early in April, the program of the Authority to bring about a

reduction in processed foods in storage at Heart Mountain became ef-

fective. Other relocation centers were instructed to make their

requisitions for certain foods direct to the Heart Mountain center,

rather than through the Quartermaster Corps.

The Army Quartermaster Corps has agreed to take all remaining

surpluses for distribution to military establishments in the area.

"Kitchens everywhere were filled with canned foods of every

type and description -- food purchased not in the gallon .

size can, but in the convenient No. e and eS size can ..."

This statement is contradicted later in the article when the

writer asserts that, "In the warehouses I found 86,480 cans of fruit

-- 81,860 of which were the No. 10 or 63 pound can." Canned fruits

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and vegetables are always ordered in the No. 10 size can in accordance

with standard Army practice, but srailer sizes are sometimes shipped

when the No. 10 size is not available. Spices which are used in sub-

stantial quantities are always ordered in the larger size containers.

Yirn

There were five Dabies in the samp hospital and in the camp

warehouse I found a full carload -- $12,000 worth of prepared

baby foods -- such as strained juices, spinach, carrots, and

other similar baby foods."

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hospital do not use these commercially

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The five babies in the

prepared baby foods. Residents of the center eat at community mess

halls, necessitating the establishment of a special formula kitchen

from which babies at the center are fed. The number of babies under

two years of age who are fed at the formula kitchen has varied from

425 to 740. There were, on April 25, 381 babies at the center on a

diet of strained and chopped foods, with 44 others on special formulas.

"Tt was interesting that the very first kitchen I asked to

inspect was Number 17-27 .. where I asked the Japanese cook

in charge `where are the rest of your supplies'. I asked to

see his attic. In this attic -- the very first one I entered

-- I found secreted under the eaves 10 cases of corn flakes

and 10 cases of fruits and shrimp."

Because cf a lack of storage epace in the warehouses, it was

common practice until a few months ago to store certain non-perishable

foods in the space above megs hall kitchens. At the time of the

Decezber inventory, for example, most of the mess hall attics had food

stored in them. The lack of storage space was particularly acute in

December and January, but lete in January the process of reducing

attic stocks was started, and the practice of storing food in avail-

able space above the kitchens has been discontinued. The Post

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writer insyected only one of these attics, and upon finding

a small quantity of food stored there based his general charge that

evacuees were hoarding food on a wholesale scale.

Project officials subsequently made a check of each of the 40

mess hall attics at the center and in only five of them was food still

being stored. What at first appeared. to be food in many of the others

proved to be empty boxes and cartons.

"Tl watched meat trucks driving in from Billings, Montana,

delivering pork loins, lard, pig sausages, and beef quarters

-- 29,400 lbs. of this butchered meat last week."

There were 27,929 pounds of meat delivered in this particular

shipment, 5,702 pounds of pork loin, 0x00A7,511 pounds of beef, 4,000

pounds of sausage, 5,716 pounds of pork butts, and 4,000 pounds of

frankfurters. This was a supply for the more than 10,000 people at

the center for a period cf eight and one-third days.

Meat for center menus is allocated under strict rationing regula-

tions, allowing sixteen points per weex per person of which thirteen

points are for meats and the remainder for canned fish, cheese, fats

and oilg. The center went on a voluntary program of rationing meats

and other foods in Jarvary, prior to the time the point rationing

system went into effect.

"The Army had nothing to do with twenty new Fordson tractors

which arrived just before I reached camp, or with 120 sets

of mule harness and 100 tobacco carts which got there somewhat

earlier. There is not a mule, or a horse on Heart Mountain

..eee-. The Fordson tractors and several new diesels, in-

cluding a gigantic bull-dozer, are being used to plow up

1,900 acres of nearby land ..."

The Ford tractors were purchased through the Army, and are the

only new tractors pought for use at the center in subjugating nearly

2,000 acres of raw agricultural land for food production.

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All other tractors at the center are second-uand and nave been

acguired by the War selocasion Authority principally from surplus stocks

of other Federal agencies. There are no new diesel tractors at 1

center. Most of the used equipment was gecunea: by WRA through Army

channels from the surplus stocks of the Civilian Conservation Corps

ees the liquidation of the latter agency. Other equipment is

on loan from the Farm Security Administration.

This equipment is being used to bring hitherto undeveloped

land into intensive agricultural production of vegetable and freed

crops whereby the center will produce the bulk of its own food supply.

In addition to clearing the land, an irrigation system is being built

to give the development a permanent value after the war.

The 120 sets of mule harness and the tobacco carts referred

to were also obtained from surplus stocks of another Federal agency and

and were shipped to Heart Mountain by mistake. The shipment was

intended for the Arkansas projects where mules are used, and was

transferred to those projects in February. There were eight

tobacco carts; not 100 as stated in the article.

"Tving in the weather are 100 or more wood heater stoves.

Piled about to rust ave radiators which were to have been

placed in two elementary school buildings which were never

constructed. Fire brick, which was to have been used in these

buildings, lies broken and scattered, and compo-board, its

wrappings ripped away by the winds, stands in piles awaiting

the first rains and ruin."

`The bulk of the building matcrials referred to are the property

of the contrector, not of the War Relocation Authority. Construction

of two elementary school buildings was halted by order of the War

Production Board after some of the building materials had already

reached the project.

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The wood heater stoves were acavuired as part of a suxplus stock

taken over from another Federal agency. They were not in usable

condition and are to be salvaged for scrap. The radiators and fire-

brick are the property of the contractor. The "compo-board" is

weather-proof sheathing intended for outside use. Puilding materials

rill be stored at the center as soon as warehouse space is available

unless otherwise disposed of by the contractor.

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