The Voices of Alcatraz

Alcatraz Island

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35173

Forget what you think you know! The history of the "Rock" spans generations. Some aspects are more popular, and we talk about a lot. Here you can listen to Alcatraz come alive through the stories told by the people who were there when it happened.

For more Alcatraz History

To go to Alcatraz

 

Alcatraz kids waving in front of warning sign

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-3714

---

"It's just the idea of somebody wants to come over to say they've been on Alcatraz." -Bill Hart, responding to why other kids would want to come to the island.

 

• Bill Hart

  
  

  An interview with Bill Hart, who lived on the Alcatraz when it was a Federal Penitentiary and later worked for GSA on Alcatraz before the Indian Occupation.

  Date created:

  01/16/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Frank Dean:	Today is February 27th, 1978. This is Frank Dean, park technician on Alcatraz. We're talking today with Bill Hart, a former Alcatraz resident. His father was a correctional officer and Bill worked out here as a caretaker for G-S-A right before the Indian occupation.
  Bill Hart:	[inaudible 00:00:35- Approx 00:03:30] Damaged recording removed.
  Bill Hart:	Different size. In fact, I think I caught probably one of the biggest shark I ever caught. It was 45 pounds.
  Frank Dean:	Wow.
  Bill Hart:	It was pretty healthy. And of course your striped bass fishing is just fantastic out here.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, we've had some luck on the striped bass [crosstalk 00:03:56].
  [00:04:00] Bill Hart:	Yeah. I think my brother-in-law holds the record for the largest striper. I think his was 54 pounds.
  Frank Dean:	[crosstalk 00:04:05]
  Bill Hart:	What a monstrous fish.
  Frank Dean:	Your brother-in-law was a lieutenant out here, I understand.
  Bill Hart:	This is another brother.
  Frank Dean:	Oh, another brother-in-law.
  Bill Hart: [00:04:30]	I had a brother-in-law that was a lieutenant here and then he later went to El Reno, Oklahoma. He transferred down there to the reformatory there. He gave me a tour of the island when it was still active. I was very fortunate to be able to go through the prison while, like I say, things were still going on.
  Frank Dean:	How old were you then when he showed you around?
  Bill Hart:	I just turned 21 then.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, that's-
  Bill Hart:	You had to be 21 to do that. That was quite an interesting tour.
  Frank Dean:	What was it like when all the prisoners were in there?
  Bill Hart:	It was not much action. It was quiet.
  Frank Dean:	Pretty quiet, controlled.
  [00:05:00] Bill Hart:	Very controlled and the prisoners very well kept. The floors were just spotless. Everything was in order. The cells were all neatly cleaned up and we'd see them when most of the convicts were down working at the shop during the day. Most of the cons were out of their cells but we saw some of the troublemakers who had to stay in.
  [00:05:30] Frank Dean:	Most of the kids would have really been separated from the prison life itself though, right? They didn't go up to the top of the hill or-
  Bill Hart: [00:06:00] [00:06:30]	No, no. I would say between 85 and 90 percent of the kids that lived on the island didn't see two thirds of the island. They were confined to a fenced area. Their whole life on the island was going from the boat up to their apartment and going out on the different playgrounds the kids had. We had the two different playgrounds. The small playground and the large one, and that was about it. Occasionally they'd come down to the Social Hall where we had movies and the bowling alley, but that was out inside the fenced area so you had to be with a parent or a teenager to go in that area. But even then you were allowed to just go straight down the hill to the place and straight back home. No-
  Frank Dean:	That was it.
  Bill Hart:	No side trips. So, like I say, two thirds of the island were never seen by the residents.
  Frank Dean:	What about when you went bowling? When could you go there? Any day or?
  Bill Hart: [00:07:00]	You could bowl every night. They had leagues set up, the residents, but you could do down there any night you wanted. They had a little restaurant down there and pool table, ping pong tables. If you didn't bowl on a league team or, maybe two or three nights out of the week they'd have just open bowling, but most of the time it was league play for the adults. So if you got on a league, you could come down and bowl. But it was open every night, Saturdays and Sundays including.
  Frank Dean:	Could you bring friends out from school? I'm sure when you told them you lived in Alcatraz, they were-
  Bill Hart: [00:07:30]	If you wanted to bring somebody out, you had to get prior permission from the warden. Of course, you had to ask your parents and then they would contact the warden to see, is that all right if my son brings a couple of his friends out? They would get permission and say when are they going to come out? In turn, the warden would let the dock lieutenant know. They would tell the skipper of the boat that they expect a couple of guests.
  Frank Dean:	You'd spend the night or anything like that?
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, they could do that.
  Frank Dean:	They wouldn't really be seeing much though.
  Bill Hart:	No more than what we'd see.
  Frank Dean:	Right.
  [00:08:00] Bill Hart:	No. It's just the idea of somebody wants to come over to say they've been on Alcatraz.
  Frank Dean:	The boat schedules... Say you were on a sports team in high school, when you got older, and you had to stay after school. Will there be any way you could do that or would you have to go home right at 3 o'clock or whenever anyone else came home from school. Were there boats running all the time, or every hour and half?
  Bill Hart: [00:08:30]	Yeah, they had a pretty good schedule. I wouldn't say every hour and a half. There were... more boats run during the peak times, such as the morning. They had three boats in the morning, say from 6 o'clock to 8 o'clock, and then they had one at 10:00, and then one at noon, and then one at 3:00, which would be the returning boat for the school kids. And then one at 5:00, one at 5:45 for returning workers that worked in the city. The wives and-
  Frank Dean:	Right.
  Bill Hart: [00:09:00]	And of course, if you went out for sports you could always catch that five o'clock boat, or the 5:45 boat. So that'd be no problem. The only real problem was at night. The last boat was at 12:15 and if you missed that then you had to wait till 6:30, whatever it was. There was many nights I slept in my car.
  Frank Dean:	Really?
  Bill Hart: [00:09:30]	Oh, yeah. I believe after I got off, that was in '58, they extended the schedule a little more. They had one a little later.
  Frank Dean:	The residents on the island that had cars, was there a place for them to park? Like at Fort Mason somewhere or?
  Bill Hart:	No, they parked right there at [inaudible 00:09:39] Van Ness.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, right there by Muni Pier or anywhere they could.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	It was kind of tough at times, but-
  Frank Dean:	That's if you're in a hurry.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, if you're running late.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, I ran for a lot of boats.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, we still do. We're always late. If we miss the first boat in the morning we get docked an hour and everything.
  [00:10:00] Bill Hart:	Oh, boy.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, we have the same problems.
  Bill Hart:	There wasn't really no problem [inaudible 00:10:07].
  Frank Dean: [00:10:30]	Yeah. People on the tours are really surprised sometimes... You know, we say that up to 70 families live on Alcatraz, and we always explain that they were pretty much what you said. They're isolated from the prison life, and they're really close-knit. The families seem to... They looked out for each other. Mothers would babysit the other mothers' kids. Really it seemed like they work together and they play together, too, like in recreation hall and all that.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, for us close as we were, we figure out... Put 80 families on two, maybe three acres of ground. It could get pretty hairy at times, but we... There was a lot of activities always going on.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart: [00:11:00] [00:11:30]	Of course, having the bowling alley there, which would [inaudible 00:10:59] allow the kids, the teenagers [inaudible 00:11:01] looking for something to do. And then we had a teenage club. We met up in the doctor's house. He had two teenage daughters. We used to go up there and have our club in their basement, which made it nice. They always had program for the kids. Halloween program, Christmas programs. And then this movie that they had every other week, that the families could go to. Always something going on.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). When you were here, Warden Swope was running the prison?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.
  Frank Dean:	You were pretty young then, but... The wardens, did they have any children, most of them? Do you recall? They live in that big building by themselves.
  Bill Hart: [00:12:00]	Swope... I don't remember Swope having any. Madigan did. Warden Madigan. When I was here, the time I lived here is when the prison was still active. Swope didn't have any kids. All he had was a big... big dog. [inaudible 00:12:08] He was the only one to have an animal on the island.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, no pets permitted?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-mm (negative). No pets. He was the only one to have that dog.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	My apartment was right below the warden's back yard, and that dog would sit up there and bark all night.
  Frank Dean:	Nobody could complain?
  [00:12:30] Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (negative). No. He was God.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. Warden pretty much had the run of place.
  Bill Hart:	Oh, yeah.
  Frank Dean:	No one really second guessed him.
  Bill Hart: [00:13:00]	No. He was the man of the hour. It was a unique place to live. Of course when I came back to the island in '64 when my dad and I took over as caretakers, I saw a lot of the island then that I didn't see when I was growing up.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	That was a good experience for me, yeah.
  Frank Dean:	What year was it that you came back when the prison was still here, when the prison was in operation? You came back for that tour with your brother-in-law. You remember what year that was?
  Bill Hart:	Well, that was probably about '61.
  Frank Dean:	'61.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. [inaudible 00:13:18]
  Frank Dean:	And what year did you originally come out here, when your dad moved out?
  Bill Hart:	'49.
  Frank Dean:	'49, all right.
  Bill Hart:	Dad was out here about a year before we came up [inaudible 00:13:24], about '48.
  Frank Dean:	And you moved right onto the island then? You didn't have to live in the city?
  [00:13:30] Bill Hart:	No, we lived in the East Bay for a couple of months, and as soon as an apartment became available we came [inaudible 00:13:35].
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. And you left here when you graduated from high school?
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Moved out?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	So how long did you live on the island?
  Bill Hart:	Well-
  Frank Dean:	Well, this is our first... When the prison was here.
  Bill Hart:	Nine years.
  Frank Dean:	Nine years.
  Bill Hart:	It was still a prison, and then I came here as caretaker a year.
  Frank Dean:	And your dad retired the day the prison closed?
  Bill Hart:	Right.
  [00:14:00] Frank Dean:	Right around that time?
  Bill Hart:	He retired just... right as it closed, and the next day we took over as caretakers.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Were you here right then or did you come out a little bit later?
  Bill Hart:	No, I was here. At the time I lived in San Rafael, or Little Valley.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	So I was... We negotiated the contract with G-S-A to become caretakers, and they accepted our bid. So I was ready to go as soon as-
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	They give up one day, when took over the next.
  Frank Dean:	So you helped your dad out?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  [00:14:30] Frank Dean:	Yeah, that must have been quite a change. One day there were... really tight security. The next day you had free run on the island, you could just do anything you wanted, cause you were in charge.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. Well, the security wasn't as tight right near the end because all the convicts were gone. Right near the end. The associate warden was the last guy on the island.
  Frank Dean:	Oh.
  Bill Hart:	And he just gathered up his suitcase and whatever he had.
  [00:15:00] Frank Dean:	I see, so... After the prisoners left, I think it was actually March 21st 1963, did the guards and everybody... They were here for months after that.
  Bill Hart: [00:15:30]	There was... Very few guards were still here. My dad happened to be one of them, and there was maybe four or five others. Just to more or less patrol the island and keep an eye on things, and also handle the transfers of... A lot of the other prisons took things from this prison. Desk and... whatever they could use.
  Frank Dean:	Did they take a lot of things off the island when they closed it down? They took furniture-
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, a lot of furniture.
  Frank Dean:	[crosstalk 00:15:45] They transferred to other prisons.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. From the way I understand it, when we lived on the island all the furniture was supplied to us by the government.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart: [00:16:00]	None of it was ours. And then, the last couple of years, they decided instead of replacing it or keeping it up like they did before, you had the option to use your own furniture or buy their stuff. So they did, they sold all this furniture to the people.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	So, when the island phased out, people just took the furniture because they purchased it. So there wasn't really much luck in the way of furniture.  Appliances or anything.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  [00:16:30] Bill Hart:	There was a lot refrigerators, I know. I think they were gas.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. Did... Were you here? Or you were in the Valley around that time when they began transferring prisoners to other prisons? They were closing down?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	Is this kind of a slow process, getting men sent out a little bit at a time?
  Bill Hart:	Well, they moved quite a few at a whack.
  Frank Dean:	Did they?
  [00:17:00] Bill Hart:	Yeah. They transferred quite a few at a time. [inaudible 00:16:58] about 30 or 40 at a time.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. Well, how big was that boat? The regular boat?
  Bill Hart:	The warden-
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, the Warden Johnston [crosstalk 00:17:07]?
  Bill Hart:	That was... I think the capacity on that was a little over 100 people.
  Frank Dean:	Oh, that's a pretty good size.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, I'm trying to think... I would say a total capacity of maybe 100, no more.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	But it was a pretty good sized boat.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, that boat's still around, apparently.
  Bill Hart:	Is it really?
  Frank Dean:	I think some Sea Scouts have it or something.
  [00:17:30] Bill Hart:	The last time I saw it was at the Oakland Estuary.
  Frank Dean:	Not really sure where it is. It's somewhere around the Bay Area.
  Bill Hart:	[inaudible 00:17:35]
  Frank Dean:	[inaudible 00:17:38]
  Bill Hart:	That was a pretty good old boat.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	Then they had one, the [McDowwel 00:17:45]. I don't know what-
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, that was an old army boat or... Maybe they inherited it or something.
  Bill Hart:	That was their backup boat.
  Frank Dean:	Okay. And they tied them both up out here somewhere?
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, one was [inaudible 00:17:56] and the other was tied over here.
  Frank Dean:	Okay, on one side.
  [00:18:00] Bill Hart:	The McDowwel was a smaller boat. It wasn't as nice as the Warden Johnston.
  Frank Dean:	So, what was it like? Did you have your own boat out here when you were caretakers?
  Bill Hart:	When we were caretakers, yeah, we had to supply our own boat.
  Frank Dean:	That was a big investment.
  Bill Hart:	Well, no, Dad worked a deal with a friend of his [crosstalk 00:18:24].
  Frank Dean:	To use his boat?
  Bill Hart:	[crosstalk 00:18:28]
  Frank Dean:	That's good.
  Bill Hart:	[inaudible 00:18:29]
  [00:18:30] Frank Dean:	So, you had to use that to get your supplies and everything?
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	You got your food out and water. Or you had water up in the tower.
  Bill Hart:	The water would come across on the barge, and then we'd pump it from here up to the storage tank.
  Frank Dean:	What would you guys do during the day? It seems to me that there wasn't much going on. Just kind of walk around.
  Bill Hart:	Well, yeah, kind of-
  Frank Dean:	Do your own thing?
  Bill Hart: [00:19:00]	Depending if there was something... Some project that he... Dad would kind of initiate anything we were doing. There was stuff that had to be done. Especially later on after that... The main power line got cut by that ship. You had to constantly maintain them diesel generators down at the powerhouse.
  Frank Dean:	They never restored that line, did they?
  Bill Hart:	I don't think so. No, they never did.
  Frank Dean: [00:19:30]	Yeah. Maybe you can go into that a little more. That diesel... That tank, I guess it was, was going across the bay and it dragged its anchor along that cable-
  Bill Hart:	No, what had happened... I think it the island in the fog.
  Frank Dean:	Oh.
  Bill Hart:	And after it hit the island, it dropped its anchor.
  Frank Dean:	I see.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. And when he did, he cut that line.
  Frank Dean:	When would that have been? In mid 60s sometime?
  Bill Hart:	No, that was... after I was off the island. So it was around '66, '67.
  [00:20:00] Frank Dean:	Okay, and there was a line... Alternating current, A-C current, from the mainland, that supplied the lighthouse.
  Bill Hart:	Right.
  Frank Dean:	The old warden's house, for a while, that you originally did, and what else?
  Bill Hart:	I think the x-ray machine up in the prison was A-C.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	So it supplied that.
  Frank Dean:	The hospital area.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. The hospital area.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	And then, of course, later when they everything closed up [inaudible 00:20:21] shut down the powerhouse, we tapped off the A-C line and that converted-
  Frank Dean:	So they didn't use the direct current anymore after that?
  Bill Hart:	No. [inaudible 00:20:29]
  [00:20:30] Frank Dean:	But after that ship kind of disrupted things, you had to use the diesel generators.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Did you have convertors for your-
  Bill Hart:	I don't know what the deal was. Now that I think about that, I don't know whether that was putting out A-C or D-C.
  Frank Dean:	Well, towards the end there I think they did convert to A-C.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	So it might have been an A-C system at the end.
  Bill Hart:	I think so.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, they spent a lot money on changing it over.
  Bill Hart:	Cause I would remember him using the convertor for the television, and I don't. I can remember that.
  [00:21:00] Frank Dean:	And you used to live in building 64, when [crosstalk 00:20:59]... yeah. But then when you became caretakers, you moved over to...
  Bill Hart:	Call it C building.
  Frank Dean:	Up on the [inaudible 00:21:06].
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	Okay. So, tell me about the Indian occupation. We have a lot of questions, and the first question is, who broke all the windows?
  Bill Hart:	The Indians.
  Frank Dean:	The Indians?
  Bill Hart:	Those terrible old Indians.
  Frank Dean:	Terrible Indians.
  [00:21:30] Bill Hart: [00:22:00]	No, they... I really didn't have much to do with the Indians. They came after I'd gone. My dad was out here with an older fella, after I'd left, and when they started coming aboard on the island, he called for help from G-S-A, and they just told him, do the best with what you got. They were more or less running wild here. Quite a few of them were a bunch of hop-heads. Smoking marijuana and whatever else they could get a hold of, I guess. And there was an awful lot of drinking too. So they did a lot of this damage that you see around here today. All this window business, and I understand that they took a lot of the surplus stuff off the island.
  Frank Dean:	You had already gone though, when the Indians came out.
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	So how long were you here as caretaker with your dad?
  Bill Hart:	Just a year.
  Frank Dean:	Just a year.
  Bill Hart:	'64 to '65.
  Frank Dean:	Okay. But your dad was here for a while.
  [00:22:30] Bill Hart:	He was here for... I don't know the exact dates. At least five years after that.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	But he spent some time with the Indians. There was quite a few good ones, too. My mother got acquainted with them. But they're, like anything else, you get some bad ones.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. Did he say that they were mainly Indians, or were there other people out here as well with them?
  Bill Hart:	Well, no. Of course, all I heard was Indians.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  [00:23:00] Bill Hart:	Indians. But [inaudible 00:22:59] couldn't be, because the island was just wide open.
  Frank Dean:	Sure.
  Bill Hart:	I mean, if you knew an Indian you could come out to Alcatraz.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	And any time you're around something like this, with all this glass available and everything else that was available, you're going to get some vandalism.
  Frank Dean: [00:23:30]	Did he say what the Coast Guard's role was in all that? I've seen pictures of Coast Guard boats right off the dock here, and I don't know if they were trying to prevent the Indians from bringing supplies out or what the real story was. I think the Coast Guard was just kind of trying to observe the whole situation.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, it seemed to me... Nobody wanted to do anything, they just wanted to... Wait and see attitude.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	Maybe they'll tire themselves out and leave, and everything will be back to normal but...
  Frank Dean:	Stayed a long a time, though.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. Then when they cut off the water supply and everything in there, the power, what do you expect?
  [00:24:00] Frank Dean:	That's something that's kind of sketchy. We haven't really been able to figure out who cut what power off, and who did what, and when it happened. Some people say the lighthouse light was turned out, and that's when the Coast Guard came out and... The Indians say they turned the lighthouse back on. I really can't figure out who did what. Do you know anything about that?
  Bill Hart:	Turning out the lighthouse?
  Frank Dean: [00:24:30]	Apparently all the power was cut off on the island. That would have turned the lighthouse light out, apparently. So the Indians tried to restore the light, and apparently they did somehow, but the Coast Guard did come out [crosstalk 00:24:38].
  Bill Hart:	Well, the Coast Guard had an auxiliary generator below the Coast Guard lighthouse, yeah. That's probably how they restored the light.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	Then I understand when they set that... I don't know whether they set the warden's house on fire or the Coast Guard house on fire.
  Frank Dean:	Both.
  Bill Hart:	The both the same time?
  Frank Dean:	I don't know if they were the same time, but they both were.
  [00:25:00] Bill Hart:	I understood they set one, and then it caught the Coast Guard house. The Coast Guard, they had big barrels of diesel down there to operate this auxiliary generator.
  Frank Dean:	Oh, that went up.
  Bill Hart:	I guess that took off, yeah.
  Frank Dean:	The lighthouse was burned, it was damaged to some extent. And the two houses that were around it, two lighthouse keeper's houses were burned down.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, they were attached right to the lighthouse.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	And then of course the warden's house being so close to the chief medical office house there...
  Frank Dean:	Burned down as well.
  [00:25:30] Bill Hart:	Yeah, wouldn't be enough trouble there jumping across. But they made a mess of it. And I don't know how the Social Hall down here got burned down.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, I don't think anyone really does for now.
  Bill Hart:	Just vandalism.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	Arson. Cause there's nothing down there to catch fire.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	All the juice was off.
  Frank Dean:	Apparently some paneling or something was removed and set on fire. That's what I heard. I don't know.
  [00:26:00] Bill Hart:	They remodeled that lighthouse... '58, '57, '58. They had all knotty pine. Beautiful. Knotty pine in that whole bowling alley.
  Frank Dean:	In the bowling alley or the lighthouse?
  Bill Hart:	The bowling alley.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	I'm talking about the fire in the Social Hall.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, they removed that paneling.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, [inaudible 00:26:19] and they burned that?
  Frank Dean:	I think so. Or they used it for firewood or something.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, that's right. They probably did that.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	That's a shame.
  [00:26:30] Frank Dean:	Yeah. So, was your dad here during the burnings and all that? Or had he left by then? The burning of the warden's house and all that? You recall?
  Bill Hart:	I... No, he wasn't here.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, he'd already been-
  Frank Dean:	I think a guy named Don [Terril 00:26:46] came in after that. V-S-A employee, he kind of took over.
  Bill Hart:	Didn't they leave them out here by themselves for quite a while?
  [00:27:00] Frank Dean:	Well, not for a long time. The Indians finally forced everybody off the island except the Indians themselves. Right after that, that's when the lighthouse problems occurred. So then the Coast Guard came out. Federal Marshall thing came out and removed people off the island. That was in 1971.
  Bill Hart:	That just when Dad gave it up.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	I think it was [crosstalk 00:27:23].
  Frank Dean:	It got pretty bad at the end apparently.
  [00:27:30] Bill Hart:	Well, he couldn't... We'd come over the night before, or a couple nights before, when he was getting ready to move, and... There was my brother, and my brother-in-law, and myself, and we're just walking from the dock up to the apartment, and a gang of these Indians approached us and they were asking what we were doing on the island.
  Frank Dean:	Must have been quite a change for him, being out here nice and quite, then all of a sudden being... A lot of visitors.
  [00:28:00] Bill Hart:	Oh, boy, and they were rowdy. And then one of the daughters of the Indian...
  Frank Dean:	Richard Oakes?
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, his daughter got killed.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, she fell off some balcony.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Right up on one of these-
  Bill Hart:	One of these, right up here where I lived.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, right in front of where my mother and dad lived, in their apartment.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	It was... You'd go up a stairwell and it'd curl up like this. I guess she was playing up on top and...
  Frank Dean:	Went right down.
  Bill Hart:	And all these years that the kids, they'd run up and down the stairs on the island, no trouble. [inaudible 00:28:30]
  [00:28:30] Frank Dean:	Yeah, that was kind of a sad part.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, that's really too bad.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	That really bothered my mother, because after that she was [inaudible 00:28:41].
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	Too much reason came.
  Frank Dean:	So that was the end of his Alcatraz years.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. That finished him off.
  Frank Dean:	Has he been out here since?
  [00:29:00] Bill Hart:	I don't think so. No, he's... My mother's working on a book that she hopes to get out here soon.
  Frank Dean:	What's it about?
  Bill Hart:	It's about the island and her experiences on the island.
  Frank Dean:	That's good, that's interesting.
  Bill Hart:	And the different families on the island.
  Frank Dean: [00:29:30]	Yeah, I'm glad you could come talk today, because [inaudible 00:29:21] we usually don't get time to talk about too much on the tours, and some people are interested in it. It's intriguing. Family's would live out here and children would go to school. They always ask about the children going to school. When it was real foggy you wouldn't have to go school.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, real rough.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, stayed out here all day. That'd be great.
  Bill Hart: [00:30:00]	Yeah. Kids saying, "Oh, Ma, I can't go to school today, it's too rough." After the sun went down we'd ride boat over just to ride the waves. Ride the rough weather. They had some good skippers on the boat, but, boy, they had some real winners too.
  Frank Dean:	Was the skipper, was he considered a correctional officer too? Or was he like another-
  Bill Hart:	Yes. He wore a guard's uniform.
  Frank Dean:	Did he have training in... operation of the boat before, or he just kind of-
  Bill Hart:	Well, some did. Some pick it up right-
  Frank Dean:	[crosstalk 00:30:17].
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	They were trained right on the boat.
  Frank Dean: [00:30:30]	This would have been an unusual prison. You were pretty young, I guess, when you were at [inaudible 00:30:28], but being really close to the city and everything, this would have been kind of good to be, I guess, you'd have an [inaudible 00:30:35] being in the city.
  Bill Hart:	Uh-huh (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	A lot of prisons are apparently in rural areas, where you're not... You don't have the cultural influence of the city of San Francisco.
  Bill Hart: [00:31:00]	Yeah. I don't know the exact figures on what it cost us to live here, but our rent... I'm going back... '55, '56, '57. Our rent to live right at the boat here was something like $67 a month.
  Frank Dean:	Wow.
  Bill Hart:	And that included everything.
  Frank Dean:	How many bedrooms was your apartment up top? Building-
  Bill Hart:	Four.
  Frank Dean:	Four bedrooms.
  Bill Hart:	Four bedrooms. A big living room, big dining room.
  Frank Dean:	Prisoners did your laundry and everything.
  Bill Hart:	Prisoners did our laundry. Picked up our garbage.
  Frank Dean:	Prisoners picked up your garbage?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	Where would you have to put it?
  Bill Hart:	Just right out in front. You know where you walk across that little catwalk right down the streets.
  Frank Dean:	Right. So, prisoners were in that area. The garbage crew.
  [00:31:30] Bill Hart:	They had about three convicts that went around picking up garbage and doing maintenance around there, in those days.
  Frank Dean:	There was a guard with them?
  Bill Hart:	Oh, yeah.
  Frank Dean:	Did they call them trustees?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	They did?
  Bill Hart: [00:32:00]	Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I got to know a couple of them pretty good. There was one negro garbage man that... He really liked me, and he was a good baseball player. He used to bring me down these balls I was telling [inaudible 00:31:56]. He got me my first mitt. I don't know why they let him give it to me, but he did. We'd be out there playing baseball when he'd come around and pick up the garbage, and he'd tell me what I was doing wrong.
  Frank Dean:	So you would actually be talking like we are right now to a prisoner.
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just these trustees. I mean, you couldn't sit down and talk, but they'd be walking by.
  Frank Dean:	There where the guards are.
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Guard would be right there.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Bill Hart:	But we didn't think nothing of it. They were just...
  Frank Dean:	Just guys.
  Bill Hart:	The local maintenance guys.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  [00:32:30] Bill Hart:	And he was probably on that garbage truck more than any of them. For longer than any of them.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. There was a crew down the dock here, too, I guess.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, there was a crew of about four or five guys that stayed right down on the dock. They never left the dock.
  Frank Dean:	And you would see them every day. You could look down from the balcony [inaudible 00:32:43].
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, working around the dock.
  Frank Dean:	The dock pretty much was off limits, wasn't it?
  Bill Hart: [00:33:00]	Yeah. Of course when you came out to catch the boat, you'd come down here and wait in there. This would be the waiting. It wasn't [inaudible 00:32:53]. But you'd wait in here, and the convicts had to line up over there. They had a yellow stripe they'd stand on.
  Frank Dean:	And they had to stand behind that line.
  Bill Hart:	Ten minutes before we left, they'd all line up out there, and stand here and be counted by this guard and the lieutenant in here. And then they'd stay there until the boat pulled out.
  Frank Dean:	So this was like a waiting room or on office.
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Frank Dean:	This room here we're in. Okay. What was that building over there where the bathrooms are? Do you know what that was?
  [00:33:30] Bill Hart:	That wasn't there till just recently. That was the pump for the water.
  Frank Dean:	Oh.
  Bill Hart:	With the diesel.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	The diesel engine.
  Frank Dean:	And they would send the water up the hill.
  Bill Hart:	Up the hill.
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	But, see, before that, [inaudible 00:33:43] used to go up here and the pump used to get in the powerhouse.
  Frank Dean:	Okay. How would they pump into the powerhouse from here?
  Bill Hart:	I guess they'd suck it out, and they'd go up there and they'd pump it on up to the-
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  Bill Hart:	I guess they had [inaudible 00:33:57] pump down here.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  [00:34:00] Bill Hart:	But then later when they closed the plant down, they opened up this pump here. That's how we got it off.
  Frank Dean:	Apparently all the water, right around the time they had the fires out here, 1970, the water tank was empty too. I don't know how they did that. But there's no... I don't thinK there's any water-
  Bill Hart:	Oh, no, none of the hydrants. My goodness, and if there is it's probably so rusty.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Did the fire engine run when you were here?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  [00:34:30] Frank Dean:	The old fire engine? Did it? Yeah, that was kind of a neat old thing.
  Bill Hart:	Where is it, is it still there?
  Frank Dean:	It's over at Fort Mason. Yeah, we're trying... We just took it in out of the weather. And eventually they might fix it up. [crosstalk 00:34:41]
  Bill Hart:	They took everything off of it, didn't they?
  Frank Dean:	It's been stripped down a lot, yeah. But there are some fire companies that are interested in restoring it. We might let them do that. The only ting is I don't know if we'd get it back if we let them fix it up.
  Bill Hart:	It's an old 1929 Diamond T.
  [00:35:00] Frank Dean:	Yeah, I've seen pictures of it. It was here when I first came on duty. It's been gone about a year now.
  Bill Hart:	We used to fire that up over New Year's and drive around the island with the siren.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. These turns are so tight, it's really hard to turn-
  Bill Hart:	Oh, it's a son of a gun-
  Frank Dean:	Especially a fire engine like that.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. I don't know what they'd do if they ever had a fire over here. Those guards wouldn't know what to do.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, I heard that they were all assigned to spots-
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Frank Dean:	And they're supposed to...
  Bill Hart:	Well, every once in a while they'd have a fire drill.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  [00:35:30] Bill Hart:	They'd blow the siren in the prison. They'd all come down here. All those kids line up on the balcony... "Oh, look, it's squirting the other guy." The hoses whipping around... [inaudible 00:35:40]. But it was quite a deal. But there never was a big fire. Maybe close to a big fire we had is, one day I left the iron on and it burnt through the ironing board and right through the floor.
  Frank Dean:	Geez.
  [00:36:00] Bill Hart:	And one of the guards had seen all this smoke pouring out of our kitchen window, and he [crosstalk 00:36:04].
  Frank Dean:	You had only a few payphones on the island, right? Could you call the mainland too?
  Bill Hart:	Well, there was one up here on this corner, and there was one over in B building. That was the two. And you could call it from the mainland.
  Frank Dean: [00:36:30]	That must have been hard, if you were going to call your family or your relatives somewhere else in the country. Long distance call [crosstalk 00:36:30] payphone. Have them call you or something.
  Bill Hart:	That'd be pretty tough. You'd have to call them and come down here and do it on this.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah, but you could call on the island, there were phone. House to house.
  Bill Hart: [00:37:00]	Yeah, you'd dial three or four numbers [inaudible 00:36:50]. And we used to have our little canteen down there, we used to hang out a lot. That was down there next to the post office. That was a favorite spot for the teenagers.
  Frank Dean:	Where was the post office then?
  Bill Hart:	Right here on this... corner of [inaudible 00:37:13].
  Frank Dean:	On the second floor or right near the little store?
  Bill Hart:	I'm saying you go in one door, and you go to the right to go to the store, and the left is the post office.
  Frank Dean:	Okay. Could you get candy and stuff in there?
  Bill Hart:	Oh, yeah [crosstalk 00:37:26].
  Frank Dean:	Used to hang out there?
  [00:37:30] Bill Hart:	Yeah, they had... meat, cold cuts, bread and milk.
  Frank Dean:	Who used to work in there? Who worked in there? Some of the wives?
  Bill Hart:	Well, it was... You were voted into running it through the Officer's Club. So if you wanted to be a canteen operator, you'd run for the office.
  Frank Dean:	Oh.
  Bill Hart:	And then you'd get percentage of whatever [crosstalk 00:37:51].
  Frank Dean:	Okay.
  [00:38:00] Bill Hart:	My brother-in-law had it one time. I helped him in there. [inaudible 00:37:57] They had everything that the typical little stores nowadays have. The short stops and 7 Elevens.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, sure changed now though.
  [00:38:30] Bill Hart:	Oh, boy. It's really rough to look at the island now and see it the way it is, because it's like coming back to your old neighborhood and seeing it all tore up. Because I spent all my prime years here. But it's... It would be nice to see it like it used to be. Seeing these stairs with no railings and all the glass broken out.
  Speaker 3:	How do you think they should restore the island if Park Service ever get some money? What do you think they should do? Do you think that they [inaudible 00:39:02]?
  [00:39:00] Bill Hart:	That'd be tough, because there's just so much to be done.
  Speaker 3:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	The salt there just plays havoc with whatever you're going to restore. You just have to maintain it.
  Speaker 3:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart: [00:39:30]	If you could figure something out, do it all in plastic or something that wouldn't deteriorate. But, yeah, there's a lot of buildings here that... I [inaudible 00:39:38] too. The prison would probably be the main thing. That's what the people want to see.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart: [00:40:00]	But... Yeah, I would think... If it falls down, just level it and leave it down. Rather than put a lot of money into it. Frank had mentioned something, that the girders underneath the prison were coming apart. The concrete.
  Frank Dean:	Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, the supports are giving away.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah. They've been doing that for quite a while. I mean they were doing this 15 years ago.
  Frank Dean:	Really?
  Bill Hart: [00:40:30]	Starting to deteriorate, yeah. I see the outside of these windows, the metal framing around these windows, and how they're getting eaten up. See, before when the prison had it, they just kept on stuff of all this stuff. If they saw rust, they'd spray it [inaudible 00:40:34]. Where it'd almost be impossible for you to do it. It'd just be so [crosstalk 00:40:39]... Just the expense would be out of reach.
  Speaker 3:	I know.
  Bill Hart: [00:41:00]	I don't know. It's a tough problem you have. You have to... maybe just let her go as long as you can and just call it quits. I don't know what they're going to do with it next, I don't know. One guy said it'd make a nice prison.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. Then again you have the expense.
  Bill Hart:	That's it. I heard the figure... Something like it costs to government $80 a day to maintain this prison and to take care of a convict out here.
  Frank Dean:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	$80 a day.
  Speaker 3:	$80 [inaudible 00:41:21] $40,000 dollars a year per man in 1963. That's the figure that I have.
  [00:41:30] Frank Dean:	1962, yeah.
  Bill Hart:	Is that what it is?
  Speaker 3:	'62. Is that about right?
  Frank Dean:	Yeah. That's per prisoner per year.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah.
  Speaker 3:	Wow. That would be [inaudible 00:41:44] $100 a day, that would be...
  Speaker 4:	$49,000 a year.
  Speaker 3:	Yeah. [inaudible 00:41:59]
  [00:42:00] Bill Hart:	See and that's a lot of money.
  Speaker 3:	Yeah, really.
  Frank Dean:	It is.
  Bill Hart:	And that's... A lot of the maintenance was done by them. It's really, it's hard to say which would be the right thing to do. How valuable is it to the majority of the people as a historic museum?
  Frank Dean: [00:42:30]	Well, when the people are here they feel we should keep it up, but I think as far as when it comes down to putting money, I don't know what will happen. We'll have to wait and see.
  Speaker 3:	How much longer will it really be safe to keep giving tours without doing anything major? [inaudible 00:42:38]
  Frank Dean:	Well, we won't know till we get an architectural study of the buildings.
  Speaker 3:	That hasn't happened yet?
  Frank Dean:	No.
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, that's probably the best [inaudible 00:42:55].
  Speaker 4:	[inaudible 00:42:55]
  Frank Dean:	Any other questions? Any other questions, you guys?
  [00:43:00] Speaker 4:	Let me get it straight now. When he was clean here, all the windows were here?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-hmm (affirmative).
  Speaker 4:	There was no [inaudible 00:43:10]?
  Bill Hart:	Mm-mm (negative). What do you mean? There might have been two or three broken but nothing like what you see here now.
  Speaker 4:	[inaudible 00:43:23] What exactly was in the [inaudible 00:43:26]?
  [00:43:30] Bill Hart:	Well, like I seen... Yeah, they were furnished, and then later on they decided to sell all the furniture that was in the apartment to the people that lived there. They had the option of buying it. If they didn't want to buy it then they would take it out and they'd replace it with their own stuff. This is almost near the end, right before they gave it up.
  Speaker 4:	[inaudible 00:43:54] In other words, if you had your own furniture what did you do with it?
  [00:44:00] Bill Hart:	If you were moving over here?
  Speaker 4:	Can you bring it over here in the later years, before it closes down or...
  Bill Hart:	Well, no, it's just like moving into a furnished apartment. You don't bring in your own furniture, you just store yours somewhere else. Cause it's expensive hauling it over on a boat.
  Speaker 4:	Yeah.
  Bill Hart:	And we didn't want to go through all that hassle.
  Speaker 3:	[inaudible 00:44:21] took a lot of things with them along with them when they went. What did they take [crosstalk 00:44:26]?
  [00:44:30] Bill Hart:	This is just what I hear. Down in the powerhouse down here. When I left, there was a lot of brass pipe, there was a lot of [crosstalk 00:44:40] tubing and glass. Different sized glass, plate glass, [inaudible 00:44:49] glass. There was a lot of plumbing materials up above on the second or third floor of the powerhouse down here. I'm sure that's all gone.
  Speaker 3:	Yeah.
  [00:45:00] Bill Hart:	I'm talking about big brass valves, two inch valves, spigots. I understand that they'd take this stuff over to San Francisco and peddle it.
  Speaker 3:	Ah. [inaudible 00:45:12]
  Speaker 4:	[inaudible 00:45:12] What kind of furniture did they [inaudible 00:45:14]?
  Bill Hart:	What type of furniture?
  Speaker 4:	[inaudible 00:45:18]?
  Bill Hart:	What would you call that chair you saw up there?
  Frank Dean:	Overstuffed chair or [crosstalk 00:45:30].
  [00:45:30] Speaker 3:	All I can say is antique, because that horse hair stuffing. [crosstalk 00:45:35] [inaudible 00:45:36]
  Bill Hart:	It was good, nice stuff.
  Speaker 3:	I don't know what, I really couldn't tell what style of furniture it was. [inaudible 00:45:47]
  Bill Hart:	Yeah, but it was pretty decent.
  Speaker 3:	Probably very traditional.
  Bill Hart: [00:46:00]	But of course, [inaudible 00:45:54] they did it. This furniture had been kicked around on the island for... 20, 25 years. It'd been refinished and restored and kept up. It was still good stuff. My mother and father still have...

 

More Alcatraz Oral Histories

• 

  Military Alcatraz

  The Voices of Military Alcatraz

  When Alcatraz was a U.S. Detention Barracks

• 

  Penitentiary Alcatraz

  The Voices of Penitentiary Alcatraz

  Listen to ex-correctional officers and prisoners of Alcatraz.

• 

  Occupation Alcatraz

  The Voices of Occupation Alcatraz

  Members of all tribes discuss their efforts on Alcatraz.

 

---

These oral histories may be used for any legitimate non-commercial public or press use with proper credit given to the National Park Service. If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact the Park Archives and Records Center’s reference archivist at 415-561-2807 or e-mail us.

For a Complete List of Oral Histories Available by Topic

 

For More Stories

Return to the Oral Histories Main Page.