The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions, gentlemen? (No response.)

The CHAIRMAN. Who is J. M. Sniffen?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He is one of the internees, who was in the camp, who had come into the camp much later than any of us did, and had an opportunity to bring in more food. By that time 5 or 6 months after that, it was generally known that when you come into the camp that the 3 days was a myth so those who came in were able to prepare themselves and bring in more food.

When we came to the camp we were not permitted to take our bedding or mosquito bars, except a few cans of food and sufficient clothes to last for 3 days.

I was housed in a gymnasium. We had walked into that place, it had not been swept, it was closed, just opened up for the new internees that came in, and had not been swept for probably 8 months. We walked in there and mosquitoes wer so thick, almost lik a fog, you you could not see a foot ahead of yourself. We had to spend 3 or 4 nights in places like that before we were able to get permission to send to the houses to take our bedding, such as mattresses, and such things, into the camp.

The CHAIRMAN. I am a little bit interested in this promissory note which you signed for $100. As I understand you did not get any money?

Mr. SCHECHTER. No. I got food for that.

The CHAIRMAN. How much food did he have on hand to sell? In other words, did he have enough to be selling to you and others? Mr. SCHECHTER. Yes. He was a trader.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you mean, a trader?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He came in, as I said, with considerable food. He exchanged food for things that he wanted, or sold them. Most of it, he sold for money.

The CHAIRMAN. Did he have privileges of going out and replenishing his stores?

Mr. SCHECHTER. No. He might have had sources. I do not know. Presumably he had no privileges. But he was incorrigible, and the Japanese could not manage him.

The CHAIRMAN. That is awfully difficult to understand. The Japanese could not manage him.

Mr. SCHECHTER. As far as we know.

The CHAIRMAN. What I cannot understand is how did this one internee get to the point where he had food that was beyond his necessities and that enabled him to sell it at these exorbitant prices. Where did he get the food from?

Mr. SCHECHTER. As I said, he came in much later than most of us did, and he brought in a very substantial supply.

The CHAIRMAN. When did he come in?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Maybe 6 months. Later some came in later than that. Some mixed families came in there and brought in sacks of rice and were able to trade.

The CHAIRMAN. I am interested in Mr. Sniffen now. Did he bring it in in a truck?

Mr. SCHECHTER. No; bags.

The CHAIRMAN. On his back?

Mr. SCHECHTER. In bags, he came in the gate, as far as I know. But he had food to trade and sell.

The CHAIRMAN. Where did he get the form of this promissory note? It could not have been drawn better if it had been drawn in Wall Street.

Mr. SCHECHTER. I think he knew-he must have had somebody col laborate with him on that form.

The CHAIRMAN. Where did he get the typewriter?

Mr. SCHECHTER. There were typeswriters in the camp. He may have had a typewriter of his own, also.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any reason why he left out the date?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Yes. The reason for the date, he made us initial that so that when liberation came he could fix the date as demand or 10 days after, whatever may serve the case best.

The CHAIRMAN. What was he afraid of? The statute of limitations? Mr. SCHECHTER. I suppose so. I think what he was afraid of was that he wanted to cover the fact that he sold the stuff at the time we were interned, and that he was taking advantage of the internees.

The CHAIRMAN. I notice that there is an endorsement on it "Paid by check, made out to 'cash' June 29, 1945."

Mr. SCHECHTER. My sister paid that.

The CHAIRMAN. Why was it made out to cash?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He would not take a check made to his order. I was not in New York at the time. He came to my sister, and she paid it for me.

The CHAIRMAN. How was the check indorsed when you got it back? Mr. SCHECHTER. I did not see the check. It must have been endorsed--he had to endorse it over my sister's signature, I guess in order to cash it. I have not seen the check. I can get that check

for you.

The CHAIRMAN. I was only interested for the time being in knowing who got the money on the check.

Mr. SCHECHTER. He did.

The CHAIRMAN. Did his name appear on it as the endorsement? Mr. SCHECHTER. It must have, in order to go to the bank to cash it. The CHAIRMAN. I know. I am asking if his name was on it?

Mr. SCHECHTER. I do not know. I have not seen the check to tell the truth. I could mail the check to you.

The CHAIRMAN. He could have given the check to somebody else. Mr. SCHECHTER. He might have. I have never looked up the check. But I could get the check. It is in my sister's office.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know how many others he sold food to? Mr. SCHECHTER. To many people. He was transferred from our camp to Los Banos.

The CHAIRMAN. Was that a promotion?

Mr. SCHECHTER. We were trying to get rid of him? He was incorrigible.

The CHAIRMAN. How many notes like these, and in what amount do you suppose he was able to get?

Mr. SCHECHTER. I guess he got many of them. I was in charge of the camp exchange. The object of the camp exchange was to prevent prices in the camp from soaring too high for food, so that if one had an extra can of corned beef and wanted a shirt or a pair of socks, or a

pair of shoes, we put those up for exchange. That was an official transaction of the camp. Or if you had rice, for instance, either brought in from the outside in the early days, or sugar brought in, when it was possible to get things through the gate, you could have packages coming through the gate, and I believe he must have operated with a crew that he had on the outside that brought him packages every day when the gate was still open, and you could send in a certain amount of food every day. I guess he accumulated that food, and when the gate was definitely closed and the camp markets were closed by the Japanese, is when he started his operations.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you get for this indebtedness of $100. Mr. SCHECHTER. I got six cans of corned beef, and I think three cans of Spam.

Mr. HALE. Spam?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. It would seem to me that he had not lived up to the Ten Commandments that I referred to yesterday. There were a few who have not.

Mr. SCHECHTER. No.

group as large as that you will find some.

In every

The CHAIRMAN. It is almost unbelievable. Mr. SCHECHTER. He did another thing, to get items for trading for instance. Before our first Red Cross packages came in, or were heralded to be coming in, by that time cigarettes were scarce, tobacco was scarce, other things were scarce. We would go to some of the internees and offer them an advance, whether you get the package or not, he agreed to pay you so much for them. If you do not get it, if the package does not arrive, "I am out that money," was his proposition. In that way he had food to trade later on, because he had bought up several of those packages. And he commercialized on it. The CHAIRMAN. He is not here as a witness today, is he? No. Mr. SCHECHTER. He would never have gotten that check from me without his name on it, and his endorsement, if I had been in the office. He came in to my sister, presented an obligation of mine, and I had just gotton back, just arrived back there in May, and came east, just arrived a few days ago, and was in terrible shape and went away for my health. He came in and presented this note to my sister. And she paid it.

The CHAIRMAN. Did he come back on the boat with you?

Mr. SCHECHTER. No. He was not on the boat with me; he must have arrived ahead of me. He got away before I did. I think he got away as early as he could because he wanted to collect all these notes that he had and could possibly collect before things got hot for him. The CHAIRMAN. I am surprised he did not wait to stay, as the internees were there to sign more notes.

Mr. SCHECHTER. He was not very popular.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions, gentlemen?
Mr. HALE. Where was the food kept that he had to sell?
Mr. SCHECTER. He kept it behind his bunk, or a shanty.

Mr. HALE. Was it locked up?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Oh, yes. He was a trader.

Mr. HALE. What was that?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He was a trader, or a traitor. I do not care which way you want to call it. But the joke of that is that normally that

food was not worth any such money. But it meant the question of life or death; if we had that we could survive, and if we did not, we would die.

At the time of liberation I was in the hospital.

Mr. HALE. For how long a period was he able to do business on those terms?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He left our camp with the first group that went to Los Banos. That must have been the early part of 1944. He went to Los Banos. How he carried on over there I do not know. I think his record is about just as rotten over there as it was at our

camp.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Were there many such traders, as you call them? Mr. SCHECHTER. No; not many.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Ten or fifteen in your camp of 5,000?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Probably less than that.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. I was wondering, Mr. Chairman, if this man might be available to question him before the committee sometime, or some of the other traders. I think it would be interesting to hear their story.

Mr. SCHECHTER. I do not know where he lives.

The CHAIRMAN. There was one further matter that I am interested in that I overlooked asking about.

How much weight did he lose?

Mr. SCHECHTER. He did not lose any weight.

The CHAIRMAN. What business was he in during prohibition, do you know?

Mr. SCHECHTER. I do not know. He ran, prior to the war, an icecream shop in the American district. I do not know anything about him. He ran an ice-cream shop where the Americans lived, prior to the war.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions, gentlemen? Mr. HALE. Has he filed income-tax returns?

Mr. SCHECHTER. I could not say. I know this much: I know his own nephew, who was a youngster who lived with him, would not have anything to do with him.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Mr. Chairman, just one or two more questions. Did you ever have an internal organization in your camp. which might cope with such internal profiteering?

Mr. SCHECHTER. Yes, sir; we did. Our committees had all sorts of regulations, policing, trying to stop those things. But it seems that these few around must have known the ropes, or were able to pay their way through to the Japanese, and we were helpless. As I said, our own camp at the exchange that I ran was for the purpose of trying to obviate such things, so that if you had a can of Spam, a handful of rice in excess of what you needed, and wanted to get something else that somebody else had, we would trade that for you, and put it on a board like the stock exchange. That was part of our work. We tried to stop that.

In his case we never even succeeded. Our committee tried him and sentenced him. We never succeeded in getting him put in jail, either because he had more influence with the Japanese than we had, or our committee had.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. I have some good friends in my home town who were in the camp. They told me that Chinese, who were outside, brought in food and impoverished themselves, without taking any money or certainly without making any profit.

Mr. SCHECHTER. There was a lot of that.
Mr. ELLSWORTH. Did you know of that?

Mr. SCHECHTER. That was the early part when the gate was opened, and they were permitted to send food in there. Certain hours every day somebody from the outside could bring you a package. That was when the camp was still under civilian commanders. When the military took over, these things gradually stopped in order to stop our contact with the outside.

Then they opened up stalls inside the camp where they allowed Filipinos to come in, bring in their greens and other things that we could buy from them. Eventually the Japanese military police took over, and that was abolished. And after that all contact with the outside was stopped, and that is when the people like Sniffen were able to flourish.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Was the generosity I heard about a common thing so far as the Chinese generally were concerned?

Mr. SCHECHTER. The Chinese were liberal. The Filipinos were liberál, all of them.

I might perhaps also enlighten the committee here. A lot of question has been raised about was food available on the outside. Now, the Swiss community at one time approached our committee, willing to supply food on our signature for the entire camp. I mean a group of us would undertake to underwrite the debts. The Japanese would not permit that.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. In other words, they wanted to starve you?
Mr. SCHECHTER. That is right.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. Fellows like this trader you speak of, and I think a "t" might do better than the "d" in the word, might be called our equivalent of quislings?

Mr. SCHECHTER. I think so. The reason I would not renege on this note is because I was buying with my eyes open. It was either that

or starve.

Mr. ELLSWORTH. It would hardly have been possible for him or cthers of that type to carry on that trade if he had not had some contact with the enemy.

Mr. SCHECHTER. That may be right. He must have.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much for your fine statement.

STATEMENT OF MRS. MARGUERITE WOLFSON, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mrs. WOLFSON. I do not know this man, but I do know that a lot of people got food who had no contact with the enemy. I was out being taken care of—

The CHAIRMAN. Come forward please and state your name and address.

Mrs. WOLFSON. I am Marguerite Wolfson, and I am at the Willard Hotel in Washington.

The CHAIRMAN. What is it you wish to say?