I may be completely wrong, but I had the impression that a lot of people in Japan were kind of starving and going through hardship during a lot of those years, and I'm thinking perhaps O Sensei was no exception. A prominent sensei told us at a seminar that during his uchideshi years at Hombu he was just about eating a diet of potatoes, and it wasn't by choice. I understood that the dojo went through some rough times while O Sensei was alive.